Consultation is now closed, and we thank you for your feedback. Any changes to our fees and charges to pay for better regulation will be implemented on or before October 2023. |
The independent MartinJenkins review found our funding is unsustainable. We reviewed our funding and fees to find out exactly what our financial situation is.
Our regulatory activities are currently funded from fees, charges, and the government. The money we get from these should cover all the costs of providing services.
We spent 18 months reviewing our fees, charges, and funding and:
This was the first comprehensive review of fees and charges we’ve done since the agency was established in 2008. We haven’t raised most of our fees since – not even adjusting them for inflation, or for changes in regulation or legislation. The number of vehicles and drivers needing to be regulated has also increased a lot since most fees and charges were set.
The review found that most of our fees and charges don’t reflect the current cost to regulate and to provide regulatory services, and it confirmed our current funding situation isn’t sustainable. It found:
More information
Fees and funding consultation document [PDF, 4.4 MB]
In 2017 we were receiving $165.3 million in funding per year. This amount of funding left us with a shortfall.
Our costs are $185.5 million per year to do the work we’re currently doing, which is propped up by $95 in government loans - $80 million over four years to stabilise and start rebuilding our regulatory function, and $15 million to tackle a backlog of unsafe vehicle cases (see below for details).
The money we’ve borrowed from the government will run out, and we need to be able to continue paying the extra staff we’ve hired to do regulatory work, to pay back the loans, and to keep building to be a better regulator.
To fully fund the costs of effective regulation, we need $264.6 million annually – an extra $100 million each year – to continue to strengthen the regulatory function, increase our regulatory activities, address past and future inflation, and for the repayment of loans.
For Proposals 2 to 8, our costs fall into eight general categories:
Personnel costs |
The cost of staff involved in frontline services, including monitoring and auditing of people and businesses in the land transport system, processing licencing applications and vehicle registration, and making sure the data in our registers is accurate. |
Training and development costs |
Costs to make sure our staff have the skills and tools to do their jobs well. |
Agent fees |
Fees Waka Kotahi pays organisations (like AA, VTNZ and VINZ) to deliver frontline services on our behalf. |
Service delivery costs |
Costs to deliver a service that isn’t staff time or agent fees. Includes postage and printing, the manufacture of licence plates, credit card fees etc. |
Operational support costs |
Back-office regulatory support functions needed to make sure the regulatory system is up to standard, including executive managers, project management, administrators, change, risk and assurance, and intelligence functions. |
Business support costs |
Shared corporate costs, including human resources, IT platforms, financial services, communications and information services. |
Core business loan repayment |
The cost to repay the $80m government loan to rebuild the regulatory function in Waka Kotahi, hire more staff to fill critical frontline roles, strengthen governance and leadership, and to increase compliance and enforcement in critical areas. |
More information
Fees and funding consultation document [PDF, 4.4 MB]
Waka Kotahi received $95 million in government loans after regulatory failure. They are:
More information
Fees and funding consultation document [PDF, 4.4 MB]
Loan repayments have been included in the future costs that need to be paid by fees, charges and government funding.