RMA amendments provide breathing room for holders of expiring consents

The Government has introduced the Resource Management (Duration of Consents) Amendment Bill 2025 (“Bill”), a targeted interim reform designed to prevent resource consents from expiring in the period before the proposed RMA replacement regime takes effect. The Bill is essentially proposed as a “stop-gap” measure, aimed at providing legal certainty and avoiding unnecessary cost and administrative burden for both consent holders and councils during the transition period. The Bill is due to receive Royal Assent imminently.

What you need to know

The Bill proposes to capture two broad categories of consents:

1. Current resource consents that are due to expire before the end of 2027 are proposed to be automatically extended until 31 December 2027.

2. Consents that expire before the Bill becomes law will be deemed to be revived and extended until 31 December 2027, but only where the holder was lawfully continuing to operate under section 124 of the RMA (exercise of resource consent while applying for new consent) and has applied for a replacement consent, but the application has not yet been decided. Consent holders can choose to withdraw that replacement consent application and instead benefit from the extension under their current (previously expired) consent.

   
   

Importantly, these extensions are proposed to apply by operation of law, without any application or formal step required from consent holders.

There are important proposed limits and exclusions to the above general rules:

1. Water-related consents (including certain water permits, discharge permits relating to water, and land use consents that include associated discharges relating to water) will not be extendable beyond a total duration of 35 years from their original commencement date.

2. Additionally, certain “deemed” water consents will expire on 1 October 2026 regardless of the extension.

3. Wastewater consents that have already benefited from extension under sections 139C or 139D of the RMA are excluded entirely from the Bill.

   
   

Existing consent conditions are proposed to continue to apply to consents affected by the Bill, unless a change is required to give effect to the consent’s extended term. Sections 125 (lapsing of consents), 127 (change or cancellation of consent conditions), 128 (review of consent conditions) and 129 (notice of review of consent conditions) will continue to apply to these extended consents.

Once the Bill received Royal Assent, consent authorities will be required to update the expiry date of affected consents within six months.

Comment

For consent holders, the practical effect of the Bill is short-term certainty, as well as creating a window to prepare for the incoming replacement resource management system.

If you have any questions about how this Bill, or the wider proposed resource management reforms, may affect you, reach out to someone in our team.