Why fast-track isn’t always so quick

Sunday, 29 March 2026

Wayne Brown is the Mayor of Auckland

Opinion: One of my initiatives at Auckland Council was to have regular forums with the developer community, so that both sides could hear from each other, in a series of conversations aimed at improved understanding of each side’s expectations and an improved economy overall.

Not surprisingly, some developers moaned about the time all the paperwork takes and some of our planners moaned about poor, unrealistic applications. All involved want a better, cheaper, faster service that better suits the needs of our largest city.

We are making progress.

In the background, central government are busy with law changes that in some cases will be helpful, but in others seem to be fixing imaginary problems.

Unlike most government advisers and most elected councillors I have filed many of my own resource consents, and have a good understanding of the pressures from both sides, both financially and in terms of time as an applicant, and the risk and compliance considerations as the approver.

Council recently commissioned a review of our planning services and it came up wanting, particularly in the lack of consistency from staff with some wanting every box ticked and others being more accepting. Generally the younger, less-experienced planners were slower and more demanding of box-ticking, so council is moving to have some senior staff overseeing the work of our teams to ensure consistent and timely service.

Council have also trialled a premium, more expensive but faster, service for resource consents and this has proved popular.

While this has been happening, the government introduced the Fast Track Resource Consent process, which has had a mixed result. Council is generally supportive of the idea of a fast track for big or controversial projects that need a fast response and there have been some good examples like the Bledisloe Wharf upgrade and the new Surf Park sports and residential project in Dairy Flat. In both of these cases, construction started almost immediately and good use was made of the speed of the process.

However this government-mandated and largely government-controlled process has also been used for some very querulous residential projects in areas in which council doesn’t have, or intend to have, the appropriate infrastructure. And, insanely, this fast track process doesn’t require the applicant to get on with things, allowing some years before any action takes place.

Fast Track should be only available to Fast Build projects. Some projects have claimed to be shovel-ready, but they weren’t wallet ready. If these projects are to be allowed a couple of years to get going then the normal council resource consents program is fine. Indeed, one recent approval is for a Fast Track for 4000 homes where most of the applicants won’t be alive by the time the last house is built.

One of government’s drivers for changing the resource consent laws is the theory that councils are holding up development which sounds good - but there are over 9,500 approved resource consents in Auckland that nobody is taking action on and that’s because the market is flat and there are no buyers for the end product.

That is a by-product of our economy, and even though my council is doing its best to lift our economy with Tech Alliances and so on, the economy is primarily the government’s issue.