The principles we use to set our prices

We use six pricing principles to set the fees and charges that were agreed by the Government in August 2003. The principles state that prices should:

• reflect actual costs
• not discourage applicants
• ensure predictability
• recognise public benefits
• enable us to anticipate planned legislative change
• not be a barrier to growth and innovation.

We aim to strike a balance between the first principle – the cost to process applications – and the remaining five that focus on encouraging and supporting the application process.

Application fees vary depending on the complexity of the application, processing time, and whether it's publicly notified or not. If fees change you will be charged the fee that applied at the time you submitted your application.

Why some fees are negotiated

Most of our applications have fixed fees. But for some applications the fee is listed as “negotiated”. These are mostly unique applications where there have been too few instances of that application type to establish a history of costs. The fee is determined on an individual basis, after consultation with you and prior to your application being processed.

The best way to determine what your application fee will be is to talk to us as early as possible, before you start preparing your application.

Disbursement charges

Some applications have a fixed fee plus disbursements. These are usually applications that are publicly notified and the disbursements can include costs incurred to notify the application. This may be an advertisement in the four main national newspapers.

The disbursements associated with a negotiated fee are also for advertising the application but may also include some of the costs for a public hearing (if one is needed). Any costs incurred from engaging consultants and external experts to provide further information will be on-charged to you as they are charged to us. We will provide an estimate of disbursement costs before you submit your application.

Further information requests

As far as possible, we will identify all the information you need to provide in your application before it is formally accepted. But occasionally we need to request further information after receiving your application. We can only do this within the first 10 working days after it has been formally accepted.

If you are unable or unwilling to provide the requested information, we may charge you the additional costs incurred to seek the information ourselves. The cost of securing the information will be charged at the standard hourly rate. You can ask for an estimate of the additional costs you are likely to be charged.