Southland District Council to change processing practice for boundary adjustment resource consents

Southland District Council is immediately changing its processing practices associated with boundary adjustment resource consents.

Following an internal review, the Council is changing how it processes resource consent applications for boundary adjustment subdivisions.

The Operative District Plan defines “boundary adjustment” as: a subdivision to adjust the boundaries between adjoining titles where no additional titles are created. Legal advice received by the Council confirms that for an application to qualify as a boundary adjustment, the application must seek consent to subdivide each adjoining title to adjust the boundary between them. Council’s advice also confirms that:

• applications that seek to subdivide only one existing title will not satisfy the Operative District Plan’s criteria for a boundary adjustment, even where the application proposes to subsequently amalgamate one of the subdivided allotments with an adjoining allotment; and
• titles separated by a road do not qualify as “adjoining” under the Operative District Plan, and so boundary adjustment subdivisions cannot occur across two titles separated by road.

What this means

This affects the information that the Council will require to process boundary adjustment applications going forward. Application lodged with Council prior to 1 December will be processed in as they have previously.

For future resource consent applications, boundary adjustment applications must include survey information for each adjoining title that is proposed to have its boundary adjusted, including measurements of the current boundaries and the proposed boundaries following the boundary adjustment. Where an application does not include survey information for one or more of the titles that will ultimately be affected, the Council will either return the application as incomplete under s 88(3A) of the Resource Management Act 1991 (RMA) or request further information under section 92.

Timing for implementation

Under section 84 of the RMA, the Council is required to observe and enforce its district plan. In order to comply with its statutory obligations, these changes will come into effect on 1 December 2023.

Council is obligated to operate under the current legal framework, and is operating according to higher order documents and Operative District Plan provisions.

If you have any questions about any current resource consents, or future resource consents concerning boundary adjustment please do not hesitate to contact us at SDC@southlanddc.govt.nz if you have any questions.

A Summary of Legal Opinion from S&G about Boundary Adjustment processing practise