Pre-application Meetings

A pre-application meeting is a meeting with the council's processing planners before you formally lodge a resource consent application. It is an opportunity to present your proposal, get the council's early feedback on likely issues, and understand what information will be needed in the application. It is not a consent decision; it is an early dialogue to improve your application.

They save time and money. Understanding the council's likely concerns before you lodge allows you to design the application to address those concerns upfront, rather than receiving an information request weeks into processing. Pre-application feedback can also reveal issues you had not anticipated, which is far better to learn before lodging than after.

We prepare a brief describing the site, the proposal, and the key planning issues, along with any preliminary design drawings. This ensures the meeting is productive and the council planners have enough information to give meaningful feedback. A well-prepared pre-application meeting typically results in much more useful advice than an unprepared one.

No. The council cannot commit to an outcome at a pre-application meeting; its planners can only give early views, not decisions. However, a well-conducted pre-application process significantly improves the quality and completeness of your application and reduces the risk of refusal or onerous conditions.

Orogen documents the key points from the meeting and uses them to shape the consent application. If the meeting reveals design issues that need to be resolved, we work with the engineering and survey teams to address them before lodging. The goal is that by the time the application is lodged, we have already addressed the council's main concerns.

Most councils schedule pre-application meetings within two to four weeks. Some have online booking systems; others require a written request. Orogen handles the booking and preparation so you do not need to manage the process directly.