Section 6: Council Activities

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Regulatory Services

Responsibility

Simon Pickford (Manager Customer and Regulatory Services)
Colin Comber (Manager Environmental Strategy and Policy)

Description of service

Regulatory Services consists of the following sub-activities: Land use and subdivision consents and monitoring, District Plan administration, building control, environmental health, animal control, parking, liquor and food licensing and control, and bylaw enforcement.

Regulatory Services is responsible for:

Policy

Reviewing, monitoring and developing the District Plan and other associated strategies and policies. This is carried out by the Environmental Strategy and Policy Team.

Consents

Processing of building consents, resource consents (land use and subdivision), liquor licenses and food licenses.

Compliance

Ensuring legislative compliance and public safety.
Implementing the District Plan and other legislation to ensure a safe, sustainable living environment. This involves working with customers to improve processes and ensure compliance, and monitoring of processes, licenses, permits and consents. It also includes enforcing parking, noise control and animal control bylaws, and legislative provisions.

Scale of service

The following indicates the current demand for services in relation to consents and compliance.

115,938 (34 per cent of all council contacts) regulatory customer contacts per annum.
250 land use consents per annum.
250 subdivision consents per annum.
3,000 building consents per annum.
10,500 building inspections per annum.
200 permanent liquor licenses.
200 special liquor licenses per annum.
330 food premises licenses.
200 general health licenses.
1,000 bylaw service requests.
9,000 registered dogs.
1,150 on-street car parks.
Administration of the Heritage Protection Fund.

The following indicates the demand for policy-related services.

The District Plan became operative in August 2005. Subsequently, 10 plan changes have been processed, including two private plan changes.
The Environmental Strategy and Policy Team continue to work on the rolling review of the District Plan.
The Coastal Strategy was completed in 2006, followed by the Oakura and Urenui Structure Plans. The Final Framework for Growth was completed in March 2008. Return to top

Rationale for activity

Regulatory Services makes a significant contribution to community well-being because it forms, implements and enforces legislation and policy for situations where the activities of organisations and individuals come into conflict with the rights of others. Regulatory Services makes up 55.47 per cent of all customer contacts from the Civic Centre front counter.

New Plymouth District’s living environment is its key strategic asset in terms of retaining existing and attracting new residents. Balance, between development and the existing qualities of the natural and built environment, needs to be achieved so that this lifestyle can be safeguarded and improved.

Effective enforcement, regulation and implementation of legislation provides for this variety of lifestyles in a safe, pleasant, and pollution-free environment.

The Council has legal obligations to administer the following Acts:

Building Act 2004.
Council’s bylaws.
Dog Control Act 1996.
Fencing of Swimming Pools Act 1987.
Food Hygiene Regulations 1974.
Health Act 1956.
Impounding Act 1955.
Litter Act 1979.
Sale of Liquor Act 1989.
The Resource Management Act 1991.
Transport Act 1962.

The District Plan is required under the Resource Management Act 1991. It sets out the Council objectives, policies and rules to manage the effects of development and other human activity on the natural and built environment.

Contribution to Community Outcomes

Regulatory Services contributes to a number of Community Outcomes. It primarily contributes to the Secure and Healthy and Sustainable Community Outcomes.

Secure and Healthy

A district that provides a safe, healthy and friendly place to live, work or visit.

S&H2 The environmental, physical and mental health of the people of Taranaki is maintained, enhanced, promoted and protected.

S&H5 Residents and visitors of all ages feel safe and crime is reduced.

S&H6 A sustainable management approach is taken to hazards and risks across the areas of reduction, readiness, response and recovery.

Regulatory Services makes this contribution by:

Maintaining, enhancing, promoting and protecting community health, and minimising safety hazards and nuisances by:
Administration of the Health Act 1950 via food premise/hairdressing premise inspections.
Ensuring that liquor licensees promote safety by enforcement of licence conditions and education of licensees.
Enforcing swimming pool fencing legislation.
Administration and enforcement of bylaws.
Administering the Building Act 2004 to ensure buildings are safe and sanitary.
Contributing to a safe, crime-free environment through the enforcement of bylaws.
Hazard identification through the development of a hazards register and notification through the consents process.
Promoting a safe living environment through, developing, administering and enforcing the District Plan and the control of hazardous activity. Return to top

Sustainable

A district that appreciates its natural environment and its physical and human resources in planning, delivery and protection.

SU1 There is sustainable use, development and protection of resources.

SU2 Taranaki’s land and soil, water, air and coast, its biodiversity and its natural features and landscapes are understood, valued, maintained and enhanced for future generations.

SU3 Animal and plant pest and biosecurity risks in the region are appropriately managed.

SU4 Taranaki’s heritage is identified, recognised and protected.

SU5 Built environments and amenities are of a high standard and contribute significantly to the well-being of people and communities.

SU6 People are valued and their contribution to the economic, cultural, environmental and social well-being of the region is recognised and supported.

SU7 Sustainable development is encouraged.

SU8 Kaitiakitanga (the protection and management of the environment) is understood and valued.

Regulatory Services makes this contribution by:

Administering the provisions of the Resource Management Act 1991, providing incentives, educating and enforcing rules that ensure that the activities of some do not unreasonably affect the quality of life enjoyed by others in the present and foreseeable future.
Reviewing, monitoring, developing and implementing the District Plan provisions in order to ensure that the adverse affects of activities on the environment are avoided, remedied or mitigated.
Implementing District Plan provisions to ensure that the adverse effects of development are avoided, remedied or mitigated.
Recognising, identifying and preserving the district’s heritage, and natural character through enforcing the District Plan. This requires considerable community consultation and working with iwi and hapu to preserve culturally significant areas. It is partially achieved through providing funding for preservation of significant heritage items via the Heritage Protection Fund.
Ensuring that activities in the built environment meet legal requirements and contribute to community well-being through ensuring safety, the rights of future residents and reducing risk from faulty building and development practices.
Collecting information to allow monitoring of policy effectiveness and service planning.

Regulatory Services also makes significant contributions to the Connected, Prosperous, Skilled and Together Community Outcomes.

Negative impacts on community well-being

District Plan reviews and plan changes, along with consent and enforcement decisions need to be balanced with the rights of individuals and with the rights of the wider community now and in the future. Often, the decisions made will need to be fair and equitable in order to balance the wishes of the parties involved. Therefore the well-being of some people will be affected in order to protect the well-being of others. The Council tries to minimise this by informing the community on the purpose of regulation.

Facing the challenges – assumptions and risks

Assumptions

The levels of development in the district are reducing with the downturn in the economy nation-wide. There are indications that the mix of commercial development and residential development will reflect a move towards larger and more complex commercial development applications being undertaken. Levels of service will not be affected by these changes.

Demand for services such as environmental health, parking and animal control are largely linked to the district’s population. As there will be a gradual increase in population, demand for these services is anticipated to grow and current levels of service are appropriate.Return to top

Risks

Retaining the existing levels of service and meeting statutory timeframes is dependent on getting good quality staff and retaining them.
Another risk is that the cost of providing the service escalates over and above the amount the Council recovers from its fees and charges.
Increased regulation from central government with no associated funding to implement until fees or charges can be introduced or increased.
The incidence of non-compliance, number and scale of consents is influenced by the level of economic activity.
Changes to the Resource Management Act will require increased resources for a greater level of accountability.
The level of resource consent applications has an impact on the demand for customer support assistance and technical advice from the Council’s asset group.
Demand for environmental health services (liquor licenses, food premise registration etc) are based on population change.

Managing risks

Staff retention issues are managed by offering professional development opportunities to ensure that quality staff are recruited and retained.
Cost issues can be mitigated by regularly reviewing the Council’s fees and charges to ensure that they are affordable, but cover the cost of delivering the service.
Participate in local government forums to keep abreast of proposed legislative changes to enable any potential shortfalls in funding to be managed accordingly.
Fees and charges are reviewed annually and take into account the economic environment and affordability issues.
Develop processes and procedures for tracking and analysing changes in levels of non-compliance for regulated activities.
Management continually monitor changes in key legislation, such as the Resource Management Act, to ensure that the Council are able to cater for changes to legislation. This includes staff training, updating systems and processes and informing the customers of significant changes.
Develop processes and procedures to forecast and monitor impact of legislation changes on service delivery.
Develop processes and procedures for forecasting changes in demand utilising current monitoring of activity levels.

Levels of service and performance measures

The following levels of service and performance measures outline the objectives we will set and how we will measure our progress.

Levels of service and performance measures

Asset information

Assets required

Regulatory Services do not use significant physical assets other than those provided by the council’s Property Team (buildings) and Support Services (computers, telephones and vehicles).

Regulatory Services has 17 pay and display parking machines, 485 parking meters and a dog pound.Return to top

Managing improved and/or expanded services

Regulatory Services will manage the following service improvements:

Providing ongoing improvements to the quality of data used for monitoring, reviewing and development of the District Plan.
Improvement of the consent and inspection processes to ensure compliance with the Building Act 2004 and reduce compliance costs.

The demand issues affecting Regulatory Services are:

The demand for resource, land use, building and subdivision consents are strongly correlated with the state of the economy, as well as population growth and business confidence. It is likely that in an economic slowdown there will be a readjustment in demand to a more sustainable level. Growth in the dairy and oil sectors may also affect population and economic prosperity, this in turn may have a subsequent affect on demand for the service.
Metered on-street parking utilisation of between 26 per cent and 90 per cent with very little scope to increase on-street parking in the CBD as there are few available spaces.
Increases in animal control activities in line with population increases as it is assumed that the number of dogs is related to 0.17 dogs per person.
Liquor and licensing bylaw enforcement demand is driven by economic demand for related activities and population growth. Some increase in demand will occur if the population and the economy grow.

Funding

The nature of activities covered under the Regulatory Services requires a mix of funding including user charges, development contributions, fines and rates. This is because of the diverse nature of the benefits delivered by these activities.

Some activities, like building consents and resource consents, benefit the community by preventing the actions of some affecting the surrounding community. Therefore it is fair that those carrying out these actions should pay for the establishment of rules, granting of consents and monitoring of their activity.

Activities such as environmental health and animal control, which contribute to public safety, are funded in part from fees and in part from rates in acknowledgement of the mix of public and private benefits.

Activities, like district planning sets policy and rules on behalf of the whole community. This type of benefit is funded from rates.

Activities, like parking grant individuals the right to use resources owned by the whole community. They are funded through user charges. Where individuals will not comply with the rules established for and by the community, fines are used to promote socially responsible behaviour.

Managing change

When there are increased levels of investment in new housing and an emphasis on commercial building Regulatory Services will continue to successfully process the expected volumes of consent applications. If the anticipated volumes of applications do rise, the workload will be managed by:

Meeting short-term additional workflows with temporary contract staff in order to meet performance targets without building in long-term costs for customers and ratepayers.
Continuous improvement of regulatory process through the use of new information technology, developing better relationships with customers and stakeholders and the provision of quality information to customers about regulatory requirement.
Monitoring the state of the environment so the Council can provide for the community’s needs in a controlled manner, particularly where residential population increases, or where there are increased levels of commercial or industrial activity.

Maintenance, renewal and replacement of assets

This service has 17 pay and display machines, 485 parking meters and a dog pound. The pay and display machines have a total replacement value of $224,400 and the parking meters a replacement value of $533,500. The dog pound building has a reinstatement value of $103,900.

Renewal and replacement of these assets is funded from depreciation funding according to their expected lives.