At its 19 February 2025 meeting the Otago Regional Council agreed to consult with the Otago community on various changes to the current adopted Schedule of Fees and Charges.

The Council intends on deciding the Fees and Charges it will apply from 1 July 2025 following consideration of community feedback in late May. 

The schedule below shows, in separate columns, what is currently charged versus what is proposed.  Yellow highlighted figures and narrative indicate where change has occurred.   

The following Scale of Charges is proposed to be applied where indicated to activities includes in this Schedule of Fees and Charges.

Set out below are details of the amounts payable for those activities to be funded by fees and charges, as authorised by Section 36(1) of the Resource Management Act 1991.

Note that the fees shown below are a deposit to be paid on lodgement of a consent application and applications for exemptions in respect of water measuring devices. The deposit will not usually cover the full cost of processing the application, and further actual and reasonable costs are incurred at the rate shown in the scale of charges. GST is included in all fees and charges. Costs for applications are typically invoiced at the end of process.

We offer a pre-application service to help customers. The first 30 minutes of pre-application advice or review of application documents attracts no charge. We will always advise before we start charging for application advice. For larger pre-application projects we may invoice before, during, and after the process is complete. Fees payable for pre-application work carried out before a consent application is lodged with Council will be incurred at the rates shown in the scale of charges.

If ORC uses an external consultant for the processing of a consent, or to provide technical input into the application then the full actual and reasonable costs of the consultant is charged to the applicant. This may include instances where the applicant makes a request for urgency, the application involves complex and/or technical matters or a peer review is necessary. ORC will also charge the applicant for time spent managing the consultant. ORC will advise the applicant before engaging a consultant.

If ORC uses a consultant to commission a report under section 92(2) of the RMA, the full cost of the consultant is charged to the applicant.

Following the granting of a consent, a subsequent review of consent conditions may be carried out at either the request of the consent holder, or as authorised under Section 128, as a requirement of Council. Costs incurred in undertaking reviews requested by the Consent Holder, or as authorised under Section 128 will be payable by the Consent Holder at the rates shown in the Scale of Charges above. 

The following charges will apply to the review of performance monitoring reports for all consent holders, except those listed in ‘Fees for Specific Consent Holders’ section below. The charges shown are annual fixed fees per performance monitoring report or plan and are inclusive of GST.

Performance monitoring will be charged as 100% of actual costs where applying the fixed charges listed above do not represent a fair and reasonable charge. This includes major consent holders who hold a large number of individual consents and/or consents which contain complex monitoring requirements. It also includes consents where data or information is consistently submitted in a way which generates significant extra costs for Council.

Additional charges may be incurred for new consents granted during the year.

Audits and site inspections for monitoring consents will be as follows: