REGIONAL SIGNIFICANT CONSENT PROCESS

Regionally significant consents are those consents which need a dedicated account management approach i.e. dedicated Resource Management Officers building a mutually beneficial and transparent relationship with their consent holders to achieve compliance. In the main these consents have already been assessed as high risk (environmentally) using a risk-based process but would also include those assessed as medium risk (environmentally) but are a strategic (or reputational) risk to Environment Canterbury (e.g. quarries). They are consents that can easily be "clustered" by activity or consent holder e.g. Territorial Authorities hold a number of consents relating to different activity types and irrigation schemes service a number of individual farmers. Monitoring these types of consents would benefit from an account management approach. This approach is necessarily "adaptive" because it requires agreement from the regulator and the consent holder and involves establishing trust, maintaining communication, having agreed outcomes and is transparent.