14 Sep 2011

Speed of Canterbury resource consents boosted

6:39 am on 14 September 2011

New figures show a big increase in resource consents being processed on time by the Canterbury Regional Council.

The level of consents that met the council's deadline has gone from 29% in 2008, to 92% this year.

Environment Minister Nick Smith says the increase is largely due to Government-appointed commissioners who replaced locally elected councillors following a review of operations in 2009.

He says changes have been made to speed up the consent process, including gathering information earlier and modifying the Resource Management Act.

Federated Farmers dairy chairman Willy Leferink says one of his resource consents, which would have taken about a year to be processed under the old council, was recently completed in two months.