Environmental protection monitoring programme
Council’s Monitoring Team oversees various activities depending on their nature, including those regulated by resource consents, National Environmental Standards (NES), and permitted activity standards.
Compliance monitoring is conducted to assess how well conditions of resource consent, district and regional regulations, and National Environmental Standards are being met, as well as to evaluate the effectiveness of these consent conditions and their effects on the environment and the community.
The compliance audit grading system is based on the Ministry for the Environment ‘Best Practice Guidelines for Compliance, Monitoring and Enforcement under the Resource Management Act 1991’.
Compliance grade | |
|---|---|
1 | FULL COMPLIANCE with all relevant consent conditions, plan rules, regulations and national environmental standards. |
2 | LOW RISK NON-COMPLIANCE. Compliance with most of the relevant consent conditions, plan rules, regulations and national environmental standards. Non-compliance carries a low-risk of adverse environmental effects or is technical in nature (e.g. failure to submit a monthly report). |
3 | MODERATE RISK NON-COMPLIANCE. Non-compliance with some of the relevant consent conditions, plan rules, regulations and national environmental standards, where there are some environmental consequences and/or there is a moderate risk of adverse environmental effects. |
4 | SIGNIFICANT RISK NON-COMPLIANCE. Non-compliance with many of the relevant consent conditions, plan rules, regulations and national environmental standards, where there are significant environmental consequences and/or there is a high-risk of adverse environmental effects. |
Non-compliance could lead to enforcement measures as outlined in MDC’s Enforcement Policy.
Compliance Monitoring Annual Report
Compliance monitoring snapshot
In the 2024-25 monitoring period, which spans from 1 July to 30 June, the compliance monitoring yielded the following results: there were 5,481 individual monitoring records, with 4,673 resource consents assessed. Out of these, 3037 were found to be compliant, while 994 were technically non-compliant and 584 were non-compliant, 1 significantly non-compliant and 57 remained undermined.
Permitted activity monitoring
Some activities may be either a permitted activity or require a resource consent, depending on the specific circumstances of the location and activity. Marlborough District Council proactively monitors activities where they fall into one of our priority monitoring programmes to ensure they comply with all regulations, this may include NES regulations, proposed Marlborough Environment Plan permitted activity standards or resource consent conditions.
Monitoring by Activity Type 30 June 2024 – 1 July 2025:
During the 2023-24 monitoring period, no instances of significant non-compliance were found in any of the Council’s strategic monitoring programs.