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Councils working together
Tuesday, 2 June 2009Planners from the Southland District Council and Environment Southland are working together on the review of two of the region's most significant planning tools - the Regional Policy Statement and the Southland District Plan. While the two documents have separate purposes, the District Plan has to give effect to provisions in the Regional Policy Statement so they are being reviewed together after each being in use for over 10 years.
The Councils agreed on the joint approach over a year ago because many of their issues are common to both regional and local planning. Working together will avoid duplication and make it easier to think about the ways policies and plans could be updated and made more relevant to today's communities.
Southland District Council Senior Planner Luke McSoriley said that the collaboration between the two councils would benefit the public, not only by saving money for ratepayers but by saving time for those who wanted to be involved in two separate but complementary planning processes.
The first step had been to develop a set of discussion papers that identify some of the big issues. These have been summarised in two alternative formats - short reports and information cards - to meet the needs of people with different levels of interest or understanding.
Now the Councils are bringing the review of the Regional Policy Statement and the District Plan into the public domain with the launch of the Issues and Options phase. This will include making all the discussion papers available to sector groups and the general public and a series of public forums around Southland over the next two months.
"It's a great opportunity for us because if the community is able to identify the issues that are significant to them, and come up with some new approaches for dealing with them, it will give us much more flexibility when we come to develop the new Regional Policy Statement and the new Southland District Plan," Environment Southland Resource Planner Ilana Batchelor said.
Consultation on the Issues and Options phase lasts until the end of July. Then both Councils will look at the comments and suggestions they receive from the public and interest groups before deciding how to proceed with the next phase of each of the respective Plan reviews.
For more information, go to the District Plan Review page.
