Author Archives: Cam Drury

About Cam Drury

Cam Drury is the principal planner at Stradegy. To contact Cam email him at cam@stradegy.co.nz. Stradegy provide expert services in the field of Planning and work closely to coordinate across a range of supporting consultant disciplines across the region.

What’s New in Planning?

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Proposals for developing a ‘national planning template’ were first introduced following a 2013 discussion document ‘Building Competitive Cities: Reform of the Urban and Infrastructure Planning System’, with consultation on the development of National Planning Standards commencing on 6 June 2018 and submissions on Draft Standards closing on 17 August 2018.

The themes emerging from the consultation indicated that:

  • current plans needed to be made simpler, more consistent, less complex and uncertain and;
  • in general people wanted to make sure that councils are not a barrier to them getting on with what they want to do.

In response, changes to the Resource Management Act during 2017 require the Ministry for the Environment to have the first set of Planning Standards gazetted by April 2019. These Standards will then apply across New Zealand’s 67 territorial authorities and 11 regional councils.

The outcomes sought by the National Planning Standards are:

  • Less time and fewer resources required to prepare and use plans.
  • Plan content to be easier to access, and relevant content easier to find.
  • National direction to be incorporated in plans, resulting in better implementation on the ground.
  • Councils able to focus their resources on content that influences local resource management outcomes and their importance to the community.
  • Good planning practice to be shared by councils or applied quickly across councils.

The planning standards will improve the accessibility of district and regional plans for plan users. For example, they will provide greater understanding of what a ‘commercial zone’ does and will identify heritage items with the same symbol across all planning maps nationwide

Plan users will have confidence that they understand the key purpose of different planning tools used in plans (e.g. zones, overlays,andprecincts),andtheywon’thave to figure out what a planning tool means in the context of every different plan. Plans won’t be ‘cookie cutter’ documents or the same in every setting. They will still focus on specific provisions to manage local issues of significance to meet the needs and expectations of local communities.

The first set of Plans developed by Councils will establish the structure and form of plans, how national policy statements, national environmental standards and regulations are referenced and will require councils to adopt more standardised spatial planning tools, zone frameworks, mapping, and measures – such as those for noise levels and sediment control. Mandatory elements of the standards are required to be implemented into council plans within one year, or for Councils having new plans, such as Hastings District Council, two years, with remaining provisions incorporated within five years.

With any change there are implications and opportunities.

Implications:

  • Unanticipated or unscheduled costs to councils to undertake changes or variations to plans.
  • Initial uncertainty for plan users, landowners and or developers.
  • Potential loss of existing use rights, unless specifically secured by resource consent or certificate of compliance (for permitted activities).

Opportunities:

  • Greater opportunity for better alignment for district plans – such as the Central Hawkes Bay, Hastings and Napier District Plans, and better consistency between those plans and the Hawkes Bay Regional Plan.
  • More efficient and cost-effective implementation.

Within Hawkes Bay the three main District Plans present as distinctly different documents, with each being presented having a distinctly different format and structure despite many of the overriding key resource management principles being shared between the councils. The recently developed Hastings District Plans has introduced higher levels of specificity across particular resource management areas with feedback from the wider community being that the complexity and broad range of provisions has made the plan difficult to navigate and applications processes more costly.

From April 2019, the introduction of the National Planning Standards will introduce a new challenge to Hawkes Bay Councils. This will be to work together, between each other and with communities to establish common, simple and understandable plan structures for the management of common principle and overriding issues, while still retaining flexibility to retain specific and likely more complex, management outcomes for particular environmental resources, features and communities of interest.

Given the outcome of the recent Amalgamation Referendum, the mandate for such change may be at best ‘on-balance’ and will require substantial buy in and feed back from the community. However, if the outcomes of simplification and efficiency are as important as expressed by the community the goal should be achievable to the positive benefit for the entire Hawkes Bay Region.

As an RMA practitioner any opportunity to facilitate growth and development whilst maintaining anticipated environmental outcomes would be welcomed. More change for the ever changing resource management sector however.

Recognised Seasonal Employer Scheme

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The RSE Scheme allows the horticulture and viticulture industry to recruit overseas workers for seasonal work to supplement shortages of New Zealand workers. Across a number of regions’ the Scheme initially provided 5,000 workers, increasing to 11,100 during 2017/18 in response to worker shortfalls.

Further labour shortfalls are projected for and beyond 2018/19, and the cap on RSE worker numbers is expected to be raised to ensure a reliable supply of labour to support industry growth and regional economic development. The Industry projects that RSE worker numbers may double by 2022.

This increasing seasonal influx of RSE workers raises a number of issues for the regions Councils, including;

  • How to support provision for extra seasonal accommodation in an already constrained housing/accommodation market.
  • How to reconcile extra accommodation within the current planning framework, (noting that HPUDS seeks to consolidate urban environments and to restrict growth/sprawl onto valuable soils resources).
  • How much land should be used to support housing for seasonal workers, and what land should be used?
  • Should RSE accommodation be encouraged to utilise existing housing in existing residential communities, and if so in what form, what density, and how would effects be managed, such as residential amenity and traffic.
  • How to ensure quality living environments for workers.
  • How to achieve consistency between RMA Planning, Building Act Compliance and Housing Regulations 1947, and consideration of National Environmental Standards (Contaminated Soils),
  • Reconciling Council roles against Ministry roles (Ministry of Business Innovation and Employment (MBIE) and the Ministry of Social Development (MSD)). With most of the demand for RSE workers in Hastings, the Hastings District Council is consulting with Industry and RSE accommodation providers to investigate RSE accommodation options to address some of these issues.

Existing RSE accommodation comprises a mix of orchard-based accommodation, residential rentals (houses), Motel’s, Hostel type accommodation and re-fitted buildings in industrial areas. Alternative options being considered by Council include:

• Onsite Accommodation Model:

Located either on orchards, or close to or on coolstore/packhouse sites, these would involve sleeping rooms clustered around a central facilities block supporting up to 80 Workers with onsite servicing (wastewater, water supply etc).

• Off Site Camp Model:

Larger community facilities accommodating up to 300 workers, including dormitories, kitchen/dining and recreation facilities. Off-site Camps would need to be located at the city edge on Plains Zoned or futureuUrban land or in Industrial Zones and would need connections to city wastewater disposal and water supply services.

Selected options are expected to be implemented through the Council initiating a Variation or Change to the Hastings District Plan, a process that would be open for public consultation.

Both Onsite or Offsite Models are likely to require site specific resource consents. This would involve the consideration of a range of matters such as servicing, proximity to work locations, effects on the soils resource, effects on rural amenity, transport effects, scale and compatibility with surrounding activities, and noise, dust, glare and traffic safety effects.

It is clear that the accommodation of RSE Workers is a matter of significance for the region and these workers are required to support the Region’s economic horticultural and viticultural productivity. It is also clear that whichever Model is selected for inclusion in the District Plan, the existing range of accommodation options will also remain and will also be likely to seek increased capacity.

RSE Workers are an increasingly important and integral part of our Community and our economy, and as legitimate residents, albeit under short terms Visa’s, RSE Workers are entitled to acceptance within our Communities, adequate accommodation and a fair appreciation for their contribution toward our Region.

Whatever model or range of models that may be determined, it is just as important that the Council, MBIE. MSD and industry groups work together to increase community and social acceptance and understanding of RSE accommodation within our environments through communication, public education and recognition.

The District Plan has a heavy focus to preserving and maintaining the productivity of our rural environments, however just like these environments require certainty around water rights to actually to grow produce, they also need certainty and provision for a labour force to service them. Providing for RSE workers is therefore all part of the system to deliver the outcomes sought by our guiding planning documents.

Statutory acknowledgements & RMA

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A number of different co- management initiatives have been established in recent times, however in the world of resource management it’s the Statutory Acknowledgements framework that is likely to be encountered on an everyday basis.

Statutory Acknowledgements have arisen from a number of Treaty of Waitangi settlements around the country as part of cultural redress for Maori. They relate to specific areas of importance to a claimant group and affect processes under the Resource Management Act – including applications for resource consents and local authority responsibilities. They may apply to land, rivers, lakes, wetlands, landscape features or particular parts of the coastal marine area.

The purpose of Statutory Acknowledgements is to ensure:

  • that a particular claimant group’s association with a certain significant area is identified, and that the relevant claimant group is informed when a proposal may affect one of these areas,
  • and that consent authorities have regard to these Statutory Acknowledgements when identifying affected parties in relation to resource consent applications

    Hawke’s Bay has over 70 Statutory Acknowledgement Areas across (7) iwi including Ngai Tāmanuhiri, Ngati Manawa, Ngati Whare, Ngati Pāhauwera, Rongowhakaata, Maungaharuru-TangitŪ Trust and Ngāti Hineuru. Most are located north of Bayview between the southern extents of Poverty Bay and Taupo.

    Generally speaking, Councils must forward summaries of resource consent applications to the relevant iwi where activities will affect these areas and must also have regard to the Statutory Acknowledgement when forming an opinion as to whether the relevant iwi is an affected party.

    Its therefore a matter being aware of this and identifying when a site or area in question is subject to a Statutory Acknowledgement in a similar manner as checking the District Plan for any waahi tapu sites or the New Zealand Heritage List/ Rārangi Kõrero for any significant and valued historical and cultural heritage places.

    Best practice is to undertake this exercise as early as possible. It need not be considered an issue or potential barrier to a project. In fact it can enhance your understanding of a site or area and contribute to design outcomes. At the end of the day, the best position to be in when starting a new project is having knowledge across all aspects so that surprises and unexpected delay can be avoided.

    From our experience it’s a matter of considering cultural values at the same level, or alongside what maybe more familiar matters such as geotechnical stability and engineering servicing in the case of a subdivision, or effects on allocation and ecological effects in the case of a surface water take.

    Although this isn’t necessarily a new concept, the Statutory Acknowledgments framework brings a little more organisation and prescription to the matter. Councils, consultants and iwi groups will still need to establish new processes, and there will no doubt be a teething phase where understandings and expectations are not aligned. The purpose of the Statutory Acknowledgements framework is ‘a’ just, and respectful one however, and like any change, it will be a better and more fruitful experience if everyone works together and applies patience and a willingness to engage and learn in understanding different perspectives and transitioning to this new norm.

New national standards for Forestry sector

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National Environmental Standards for Plantation Forestry (NES-PF) will come into effect on 1 May 2018 in an attempt to get greater consistency across the country

Plantation forestry is New Zealand’s third largest primary sector. According to the Ministry for the Environment and the Ministry for Primary Industries, it employs over 26,000 people and generates around $5 billion in export earnings each year.

Together with these positive social and economic effects, plantation forests also provide environmental benefits such as improving water quality, controlling erosion, and providing a temporary carbon sink. On the other hand, plantation forestry activities can adversely affect the environment if not well managed, with the greatest risk occurring when land is exposed during harvesting or earthworks.

Rules contained in Regional and District Plans to manage such effects vary however, and while some of these variations reflect local differences and community priorities, they can cause problems for the many forest owners who manage forests in two or more regions or have forests that straddle council boundaries.

This has the potential to result in increased costs, uncertainty and inconsistent environmental outcomes. In response, and given the dominance of forestry from both a geographical and economic sense, enter the ‘National Environmental Standard’ approach allowed for under the Resource Management Act 1991 (RMA).

National Environmental Standards (NES) are regulations made under the RMA. They set out technical standards, methods or requirements relating to matters under the RMA and unlike Regional or District Plans pertaining to different regions and towns, they are intended to provide consistent rules across the country by setting planning requirements for certain specified activities.

Rules within an NES prevail over rules in a Regional or District Plan except where a NES may specifically allow more stringent rules to be developed if specific issues in a Region or District require this.

The National Environmental Standards for Plantation Forestry (NES-PF) will come into effect on 1 May 2018, and will follow five existing NES’s, these being:

  • National Environmental Standards for Air Quality
  • NationalEnvironmentalStandardforSourcesofDrinkingWater
  • National Environmental Standards for Telecommunication Facilities
  • National Environmental Standards for Electricity Transmission Activities
  • National Environmental Standard for Assessing and Managing Contaminants in Soil to Protect Human Health

The NES-PF will apply to any forest greater than one hectare that has been planted specifically for commercial purposes and will be harvested.

The main risks that the NES is seeking to manage include wilding conifer spread, erosion, and disturbance to waterways, particularly while fish are spawning.

  • To manage these risks, its Regulations cover the following 8 core plantation forestry activities that have potential environmental effects:

    • Afforestation (planting new forest)
    • Pruning and thinning-to-waste
    • Earthworks
    • River crossings
    • Forestry quarrying (extraction of rock, sand, or gravel within a plantation forest or for operation of a forest on adjacent land)
    • Harvesting
    • Mechanical land preparation
    • Replanting.

    The regulations applying to these activities are based on good forestry practices, and include:

    • Setbackswhenplantingnexttorivers,lakes,wetlands,and coastal areas – these unplanted strips protect against erosion and sedimentation from afforestation
    • Managementplansforearthworks,forestquarrying,andharvesting activities to identify environmental risks and how they’ll be managed
    • Identification and maintenance of stormwater and sediment control measures for forestry activities.

Like the structure of District and Regional Plans, if forest operators can meet the conditions, the activity is permitted. If not, they must seek a resource consent from their council. In some areas of high erosion susceptibility however, stricter requirements may apply and some forestry activities will not be able to be carried out without resource consent.

This is a serious piece of legislation, and to this effect, Councils will be able to charge to recover the costs of monitoring permitted activities that have a high risk of environmental effects if conditions are not complied with.

The sector will certainly experience change – Councils will require greater resourcing, foresters are likely to require assistance from private providers and monitoring requirements are likely to increase, and may involve on-going programmes.

Working together is a better solution

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Water Conservation Orders (WCO’s) are mechanisms under the Resource Management Act designed to recognise and protect outstanding values of particular bodies of water. Commonly associated with movements in the 1980’s to protect the country’s most wild and scenic rivers from hydroelectric dam initiatives, they are legal instruments that can be used to set rules that Councils must abide by.

A WCO is the highest level of protection that can be afforded to any water body, and are focused purely around preserving outstanding natural values for all freshwater fish, wildlife and outdoor recreation. There are a number of WCO’s around the country applying to different water bodies in different ways.

With such a pure focus a WCO can have significant influence on the content of Regional Policy Statements and Regional and District Plans, as well as resource consent processes. Criticised in some circles for being too narrowly focused and lacking the ability to weigh and balance competing interests, this is essentially their purpose as a tool to identify the water bodies or stretches of water bodies that warrant the highest level of protection without compromise.

The WCO for the Ngaruroro and Clive rivers lodged by the New Zealand Fish and Game Council, Ngāti Hori ki Kohupatiki, Whitewater New Zealand, Jet Boating New Zealand and the Royal Forest and Bird Protection Society of New Zealand, seeks the protection of the entire length of the Ngaruroro River and its tributaries, together with groundwater that is hydraulically connected to the lower Ngaruroro River. A total of 7km of the Clive River is also included.

The application states that the water bodies have certain outstanding values including:

  • Significance in accordance with tikanga Maori;
  • Cultural and spiritual purposes;
  • Habitat for rainbow trout;
  • Angling, amenity and recreation;
  • Habitat for avifauna;
  • Habitat for native fish;
  • Boating amenity and recreation;
  • Wild, scenic and natural characteristics; and
  • Scientific and ecological values.

Protection of these values is sought through a number of conditions applying to different stretches of the water bodies, including minimum flows and allocation limits for existing and new water takes.

In principal, the WCO does not seek to change the existing 2,400l/s minimum flow at Fernhill as it applies to existing resource consents to take water, but does seek to introduce a new minimum flow of 4,200l/s for any new takes.

Potential implications of the various conditions are complex to understand though, and there is concern among some parties that many groundwater takes in the region will have restrictions placed upon them in a similar manner as direct river takes, and that this may really affect the water security and resilience of many operations.

Consideration of the WCO is very different territory to the type of processes we have become familiar with over the last few years. Essentially all the same parties are involved, but in this case the parties who are often the submitters are the proponents.

The manner in which the proposal is to be considered is also different. While collaborative policy development initiates such as TANK, plan change processes and resource consent application processes entertain the weighing of competing environmental, cultural, economic and social interests, WCO’s are much more focused around environmental outcomes.

There is certainly a place for this, but one can’t help being a little concerned about how far reaching potential outcomes maybe from both a geographic and regional productivity perspective.

If one was to strategically limit the potential of the region, for whatever bizarre reason, we would unreasonably limit access to water, set overly conservative instream water quality standards, force unsustainable change at an unreasonable rate, introduce poorly conceived land use controls, fuel the urban and rural divide and assume prescriptive regulation rather than partnerships will better achieve environmental performance.

Clearly no one who is passionate about our region would set out to achieve this, but in determining what we want, perhaps we should be very aware of what we don’t want.

 

How Efficient is Too Efficient

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Obviously resource management involves the consideration and management of competing interests, or if not ’competing’ certainly ‘different’ interests. That’s the democratic society we live in, and one person’s frustration can be another person’s preferred outcome.

It’s the fact we’re different and come from different perspectives that it seems so hard to agree on an approach, and people often question whether others actually understand the perspective they’re coming from. Of course they don’t – but do you understand theirs?

This isn’t a new point to raise, and there are all sorts of methods and best practice approaches that can be adopted to raise awareness and balance competing views to arrive upon an outcome, but I’ve been quite taken by the irony that can be seen within our sector and it’s through this lens that a few more other observations can be made.

I’m loving the recent ‘feel good’ craze with electric cars. Don’t get me wrong, gradually moving away from fossil fuels isn’t a bad idea, but one could say that we’re only in the position to make electric cars relatively easy because of our supply of electricity, and I recall a lot of opposition to wind turbines and hydro-schemes.

I also find it ironic how New Zealand is so keen to tackle climate change even though our efforts may only be a drop in the ocean compared the impact of other countries. With our global citizen hat on – are we focusing our resources in the areas in which we can make the biggest difference? Are we being a good global citizen if we’re not?

Even locally I wonder what we’re doing. Hawkes Bay has great potential as a food growing hub. Talking about being a global citizen – we could help feed the world as well as enjoy some great growth, and what I mean by this is more jobs and more people enjoying a greater meaning in life – great for society yes? All we need to do is manage our water to resolve availability issues. Ironically, we may have done the complete opposite. Do we really appreciate the social implications on the communities most affected?

I think one of the biggest ironies is this obsession for efficiency. Take efficiency to its logical conclusion and this is unemployment. Perhaps the smartest thing we can do is resist ‘too much’ efficiency. I recall a time when I was in Bali and found it interesting how the resort had a man stopping traffic for you to cross the road. I learnt to cross the road some time ago and thought this was a bit over the top, but then I realized that this person had a job and they had meaning. I would be prepared to have a little more inefficiency in my life if it meant preserving someone’s meaning.

You could take this further and suggest the best public policy we could have is to resist ‘too much’ technology. Obviously we don’t want to resist it all, and this is probably the challenge, but if we’re developing technologies that are replacing jobs or slowly leading us away from healthy lifestyles, is that a future we want? Is it actually good for us? What would the world look like with less jobs but more people – and potentially unhealthy people – a world full of massive social challenges that’s what.

How does all this relate to resource management, well the RMA speaks of our environmental, economic, cultural and social wellbeing, but it seems that while people have pretty strong views on other people’s practices or ideas, and whether there’s any elements of irony or not, the social part of the equation seems to have dropped out, and it seems that we’re at risk of beginning to mess with the very basics of our social structures.

Take the primary sector, this is a delicate market, and while society could load up the responsibility on this sector to enhance our environment, could one of the implications be robots to pick our fruit rather than paying salaries due to increased operational costs? Forget thinking the implication maybe asking society to pay a few more cents per apple, technology like this probably isn’t that far away and the more likely implication is massive jobs cuts in the sector. What impact would this have on society?

The point here is that we need to be very careful, and very aware of the trajectories on which we’re setting our society when developing approaches around resource management or deciding on ideas, particularly when our technological advances have the potential to manifest as a foe rather than a friend.