by: Mike Doesburg, Partner | Kate Woods, Special Counsel
13 October 2026
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From 30 October, consent planners assessing district land use activities will be required to ignore a range of matters that have historically featured in planning debates.
Questions such as whether an apartment has a balcony, how large a residential unit is, whether there is market demand for a development, or whether a development affects retail distribution patterns may no longer be relevant to planning assessments.
Welcome to the era of “excluded effects”.
The Government’s planning reforms introduce the concept in two ways:
The policy objective is straightforward: planning decisions should focus on effects that extend beyond a site’s boundaries, while matters better left to property owners, occupiers and market forces should sit outside the planning system.
The immediate changes are not confined to the substantive assessment of resource consent applications. Related amendments also affect:
The transitional reforms allow consent authorities to disregard existing objectives, policies and rules to the extent they regulate excluded matters.
This means some provisions may remain in an operative district plan but with significantly reduced influence when councils process applications.
The most significant impact of excluded effects may not be on how consents are assessed, but on whether they are needed at all.
This is achieved by the new section 104AA providing that where a non-compliance relates solely to an excluded matter, the activity may be “deemed permitted”. This means that rather than requiring a district land use consent, the proposal can proceed without one, despite otherwise being a breach of the operative plan.
This mechanism sits at the heart of the Government’s claim that the reforms could substantially reduce the number of resource consents required across the motu.
For councils, the reforms engage two different functions.
The first is immediate and relates to resource consent processing.
From 30 October councils must not consider excluded effects. This means that planners will need to identify whether existing objectives, policies and rules regulate excluded matters and determine what (if any) relevance those provisions still have when assessing an application that generates an excluded effect.
Some provisions will be relatively easy to assess. Minimum unit size requirements are an obvious example.
Others will be more nuanced. Many planning provisions serve multiple purposes. Landscaping controls may relate both to visual amenity and stormwater management. Retail policies may address retail distribution effects but also infrastructure efficiency, transport outcomes and urban form.
The difficult task will often be separating what Parliament has placed outside the planning system from what remains legitimately within it.
The second function is strategic and concerns optional amendment of plans. Councils may choose to amend planning provisions directed at excluded matters in the short-term. However, this is not a requirement for s 104(1A) to apply. Any amendments can be made without using the full Schedule 1 process.
For developers, some long-contested planning controls may suddenly be on shakier ground.
Requirements relating to minimum unit sizes, balconies, private outdoor living space, internal storage, market demand and retail distribution effects may now carry little or no weight, depending on how they fit within the excluded effects framework.
But excluded effects are not a free pass.
Infrastructure capacity, transport, natural hazards, stormwater, heritage and many off-site amenity effects remain firmly within the planning system and can still make these excluded effects relevant.
The battleground has shifted, but it has not disappeared.
The excluded effects provisions signal a fundamental reorientation of the planning system. For decades, planning debates have centred on how development should be regulated. The Planning Act, and its transitional consenting provisions ask a different question: whether some effects should be regulated at all.
That shift begins on 30 October, but its full force will arrive when the first generation of land use plans replaces the plans councils operate under today.
Taken together, the reforms operate at three levels:
The reforms have drawn a new line in the sand. The challenge for councils, developers and submitters will be working out where that line lies.
If you are wondering how the new excluded effects provisions apply to your application, project or plan, get in touch with Wynn Williams’ Environment and Planning team. We are helping clients navigate the transition and identify what remains within scope and what now falls outside it.
Mike Doesburg, Partner – Wynn Williams Environment & Planning team
Kate Woods, Special Counsel – Wynn Williams Environment & Planning team
Piper Pengelly, Solicitor – Wynn Williams Environment & Planning team
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