Ministers Bishop and Jones recently announced changes to the Fast-track Approvals Bill. The headline change is to remove ultimate decision-making by ministers. Instead, final decisions on projects will sit with the expert panel (as is the case for the current COVID-19 recovery fast-track consenting process).
Other changes include:
Decisions to refer projects to an expert panel will be made by the Minister for Infrastructure alone. It was originally proposed that the Ministers for Infrastructure, Transport, and Regional Development would jointly be responsible for referring projects.
Clarification around the expertise required for expert panels.
Extension of timeframes for providing comment, at both the referral and application stages. In our experience, timeframes under the current fast-track process are very tight.
These changes have been recommended to the Environment Committee. The Committee’s report back on the Bill is due on 18 October 2024.
Government has also released high-level information about the number and type of projects that applicants have applied to be listed under the Bill:
384 projects have applied to be listed.
The majority of applications are for:
housing and urban development (152 projects: 40%);
infrastructure (92 projects: 24%); and
renewable energy (71 projects: 18%).
Applications are located in Canterbury (61 projects); Waikato (55 projects); Auckland (53 projects); Bay of Plenty (35 projects); and Northland (33 projects).
Please contact one of the ChanceryGreen team if you want to discuss how the proposed fast-track process may impact you or your business.