A discount of $7.60 has marred the Otago Regional Council's proudly held three-year record of meeting resource consent processing time frames.
Since 2010, councils have been required by changes to the Resource Management Act to give applicants a 1% discount for each day an application was not processed within statutory time frames, up to a limit of 50 working days.
The council recently overshot the time frame on a minor consent by one day.
The delay was caused by ''unforeseen circumstances'' including a database issue.
Council resource management director Selva Selvarajah said staff were upset about the delay and a new check had been added to the process to ensure it did not happen again.
''We are taking this matter seriously. We've worked hard to ensure we process consents on time.''
The $7.60 discount would be funded out of the consent processing budget but there was no allocated budget for discounts, he said.
It was the council's policy to meet the consent time frames ''100% of the time'', he said. He hoped the council could return to its good record but was aware it was possible a discount situation could occur again.
Environment Ministry figures show in 2010-11, nationally, 95% of consents were processed on time, while Environment Canterbury and Environment Southland each met the deadlines in 92% of cases.
