Government blitz puts ECan’s future - and finances - under strain

Friday, 19 December 2025

Will the ECan building on Tuam St be staffed after the reforms come into force?

Environment Canterbury (ECan) has been smashed and bashed the past three weeks.

The Coalition Government has promised to sack ECan’s 16 elected councillors, pledged to cap rates between 2% and 4% and introduced three bills to radically replace the Resource Management Act (RMA) - one of which was passed under urgency to automatically extend consents for two years, no questions asked.

Almost overlooked was a fourth bill to renovate emergency management, one of ECan’s core functions.

The 2025 Environment Canterbury (ECan) council.

Individually, each of these changes would be “significant”, Patrick Lindsay, principal strategic advisor to ECan’s chief executive told councillors last week.

Together, the changes are like the confluence of several strong rivers, he said, creating a mighty torrent designed to sweep away the status quo.

If the scale of change is back wrenching, the speed of change is eye-popping. The consultation periods for all this legislation end before summer is over.

Chris Bishop is the minister of RMA Reform.

Senior staff promised to work through, preparing draft submissions for councillors to fine tune and approve, perhaps at an extraordinary council meeting on January 28.

The Government wants all the legislation passed by the end of September and most of the process complete by December 31, 2028 - a three-year transition.

“Three years sounds like a long time, but for a system change of that scale, three years is incredibly quick,” said Lindsay.

A screenshot of the Natural Environment Bill.

Consider that Labour’s 2021 legislation to reform resource management contemplated a 10-year transition.

Yet, at the end of all this, ECan will still exist - in some form, probably.

In the Natural Environment Bill, one of the two RMA replacement bills, the phrases “regional council” or “regional councils” are used in 134 clauses.

Here are some examples:

The bill was “different than what we were expecting”, says ECan chairperson Deon Swiggs.

“Regional councils must regulate and manage: ”

the quality and quantity of water;
the discharge of contaminants to land, air, or water;

The Environment Canterbury building in Christchurch.

indigenous biodiversity;
the coastal marine area;

Regional councils will “jointly make and maintain a spatial plan for the region with territorial authorities [and] set ecological health limits”.

Councillor Peter Scott campaigns for office earlier this year in Timaru.

They will be the “permit authority for their regions, will regulate and manage effects, and will undertake compliance monitoring and enforcement”.

The Crown seems to have recognised some functions have to sit at the regional level, said Deon Swiggs, ECan’s chairperson, in an interview this week.

That was a “little bit different than what we were expecting”, he said.

It follows that these functions would be performed from ECan’s $47.3 million headquarters on Tuam St, Christchurch, and its satellite offices in Timaru and Kaikōura.

Inside those buildings, the consenting department may be overstaffed.

Not only have most existing and recently expired consents been automatically extended for two years, it is estimated the new rules will mean 46% of applications - between 15,000 and 22,000 per year across the country - will no longer be needed, said RMA reform minister Chris Bishop.

The new system will be faster, simpler, standardised and require less consultation, he said.

ECan has 95 office staff and eight vacancies in its consenting department, said Henry Winchester, ECan’s consents and planning manager.

Thirty eight of those workers were hired over the past 2.5 years to clear a backlog of legacy consents and an expected upsurge in consent renewals.

ECan expects to lose about $2.5m in consenting revenues by the end of 2027, according to Lindsay.

Nobody knows what the whole package of change will cost.

Former ECan chairperson Peter Scott guessed it would be $30m to $40m to the region.

Swiggs would not speculate, saying only “there will be a significant transition cost”.

ECan and the other Canterbury councils - that is, all of them - will rely on existing staff but probably also on consultants, lawyers and change managers.

The Government has promised no financial support for councils to date.

Indeed, it is doing the opposite, by capping rates at 2% to 4%. The cap will be phased in from January 2027 and be fully in place by the end of 2028.

Three weeks after Central Government started announcing its reform package for local government, much remains unknown.

But the Government seems willing to have conversations, said Swiggs.

“We are engaged in constructive conversations at the moment with a number of stakeholders, including the Government, to make sure that we get good outcomes for Canterbury,” he said.