Reviewing the Rules: Keeping ahead of the game in respect of environmental compliance

Your accountant runs a ruler over your finances at the end of each financial year, but when was the last time you checked in on how your business operates in relation to changing environmental rules and responsibilities?

It has been signalled that alongside resource management reforms there will be increased monitoring and enforcement activities by councils to ensure the rules that are set by the new legislation will have higher levels of compliance. Recent RMA amendments that are already in force have created a stronger framework to support this also. With this in mind, we think it is a good time now to consider a review of your business’s environmental compliance to avoid future issues.

RM Reforms

Legislation to put into place a ‘new RMA’ (a proposed Planning Act and a Natural Environment Act) is being developed, with the government indicating that it will be enacted before the end of 2026. This new legislation is likely to reduce consenting requirements and reduce rules about amenity issues, with the rules that will persist almost certainly including rules relating to management of the natural environment such as rules on water take limits and conditions on discharges to land and water. These types of rules and the associated resource consents are very important for a range of agricultural and industrial activities.

If your business relies on a resource consent or performance standards in a local authority plan to operate, then now is a good time to look at how you are tracking in relation to performance standards and consent conditions (particularly relating to water).

The realities of increased monitoring and compliance

Increased funding and requirements for environmental monitoring and compliance will likely include more testing and data gathering by council compliance teams, which in turn will guide focused investigations. Council officers are able to enter private landholdings without landowner consent if their purpose being there is to undertake testing and monitoring for compliance purposes.

Where site visits are undertaken to determine whether an operation is complying with its resource consent conditions or rules in a plan, councils have the ability to recover costs from the landowner in relation to that compliance monitoring work. Recent legislative amendments provide further support for fees and charges for council officer time investigating any breaches to be invoiced to landowners – regardless of whether further enforcement action is taken.

What ‘enforcement action’ can a Council take?

If a breach of a rule or consent is found, then the council officer may first seek to have a conversation with you to see if you understand all of the requirements that apply to your business, and to co-operate with you to get things on track.

If a council officer considers an activity is a serious breach of a rule or consent condition then their other options (beyond an initial conversation) include:

• issuing infringement notices with minor fines;
• issuing abatement notices which will direct action to be taken, or something to be stopped, to remove the non-compliance they have identified.

In relation to the first infringement notice option, the fines that can be imposed through these notices are being raised from 4 September 2025 to be between $600-$2,000 for an individual, and between $1,200-$4,000 for a company.

More serious steps that can be taken by councils can include seeking enforcement orders from the Environment Court, or for extremely serious incidents or repeated breaches – commencing a prosecution. Maximum penalties for offending against the RMA are now very significant sums, with $1 million for an individual and $10 million for a corporate entity setting the ceiling for any fines that might be imposed. There are very few actual instances where these upper fines might be imposed. At the moment average fines for moderate environmental offending sit around the $20,000-$40,000 mark for 1-2 breaches, however this average will rise in the next few years, roughly in proportion to the uplift in maximum fines set out in the act.

We discussed the recent critical change to the RMA which removes the ability for businesses to insure against liability for environmental offending in our previous article here. This limitation on insurance will take effect on 20 August 2027.

How we can help

It is sensible to regularly review your operations against environmental rules and regulations, as well as check in on the core parts of your business that rely on resource consents. Regular review of environmental compliance can avoid issues later.

Anderson Lloyd’s Resource Management team can help ensure your business is complying and will continue to comply with environmental laws and regulations as they are introduced. We assist our clients with:

• simplifying complex environmental laws and regulations for you to apply to your business;
• setting up internal compliance systems with regular checks and balances;
• ensuring activities comply with district and regional plans, including checking all necessary resource consents are in place;
• reviewing consent conditions/management plans/other supporting documents and talking to you to ensure they actually fit with your work practices;
• assisting with environmental due diligence on small to large-scale transactions;
• reviewing compliance reports received from technical experts and/or councils to identify and promptly address potential issues of concern before they escalate.

We also assist those facing enforcement action, providing specialist advice and representation. Should any issues arise, we encourage you to reach out at an early stage.

Want to know more?

If you have any questions about compliance under the new resource management system or would like help getting your books in order from a legal perspective, please contact our specialist Resource Management team.