Mt Barker farmers Bill and Raylene Jelley have spent tens of thousands of dollars defending court actions by their neighbour, the Miro Trust, over what they believed to be a simple subdivision of their property and have now been hit with a $33,314 bill from Lakes Environmental.
The bill is for processing the resource consents and includes $19,462 in independent commissioner John Matthews' costs.
A hearing has been set down for April 26 in Wanaka where independent commissioner, Denis Nugent, an experienced town planner from Auckland, will review those costs.
Mrs Jelley said, when contacted yesterday, the couple would be "well and truly pleased" to end the five-year subdivision saga, which was resolved by mediation earlier this year.
The Jelleys were still reeling from the weight of the Lakes Environment bill received in October last year.
They have paid it so they could receive a copy of the resource consent decision made in their favour by Mr Matthews last year.
The couple's surveyor, Matthew Suddaby, has sought the review on the couple's behalf.
Mrs Jelley said she did not know why the costs were so high.
"We haven't seen anything in writing [about] how, why or whatever," Mrs Jelley said.
Mr Suddaby said in his letter of objection that Mr Matthews' "thorough and comprehensive decision" was "considerably more robust that what would normally be expected for a relatively simple two-lot subdivision with one building platform".
He believed it was "morally wrong" for the council to ask for a $1500 deposit for processing the consent decision and later charge nearly $28,000 without indicating the much larger fee was likely.
Mr Suddaby also argued the fee had been incurred because of the history of legal activity.
The $33,000 bill "is an extraordinarily large sum for a straightforward subdivision (albeit one with an awkward neighbour), and of this sum the commissioner's decision preparation fees are an extremely high proportion of the total cost compared to the multitude of Lakes Environmental staff who have considered, prepared and presented reports," Mr Suddaby said in his application for a costs review.
Lakes Environmental planning manager Brian Fitzpatrick declined to comment on the merits of the review yesterday but agreed it was rare for cost objections to proceed to a hearing.
Cost objections were usually dealt with when raised but some roading and development contribution costs objections went to hearings, he said.
The review procedure is set out in the Resource Management Act.
The Queenstown Lakes District Council's general manager of corporate and regulatory services manager, Roger Taylor, has written a set of submissions explaining the commissioners' fees.
That document was released to the media by Lakes Environmental yesterday.
