Christchurch 3 case study
Case study: City Plan Monitoring Programme
Purpose and process
Christchurch City Council revised its Plan Effectiveness Monitoring Programme, first developed in the early to mid-1990s, to include up-to-date approaches to monitoring and indicator development.
The review involved RMA monitoring staff and City Plan policy development staff. It included:
- prioritising key Anticipated Environmental Results (AERs)
- redefining some existing key AERs
- reviewing existing indicators, and establishing a new core set of indicators
- developing a data storage and retrieval system
Prioritising AERs and indicators
Sixty six key AERs were earmarked for monitoring in the Christchurch City Plan. Thirty of these AERs were prioritised for the first stage of City Plan monitoring. Some new AERs were added to the Priority 1 list, because of their importance within the Plan. Priority 2 and 3 key AERs were identified for later monitoring.
The Priority 1 key AERs were rewritten to make them very specific. Many of the key AERs were ambiguous, had terms that needed to be defined, or didn’t reflect the Plan’s objectives and policies.
A new set of core indicators was selected and prioritised, based on the criteria developed by the Ministry for the Environment.
Developing a database
The Council used Microsoft Access to develop a monitoring database that allows staff to access and retrieve monitoring information. Microsoft Access doesn’t require a high level of programming ability from users, and provides good security. The database provides:
- a summary of key AERs by Plan section, including redefined key AERs
- links to workplan notes and generation of workplans
- indicator metadata
- indicator coversheets to go with hardcopy indicator information
Lessons learned
A lot of time can be needed for clarifying and redefining the wording in key AERs. An effective monitoring programme requires a lot of resources and funding, and must involve a variety of staff with specific skills. Creating a data collection and retrieval system is a large and daunting task that is best approached by working through small, achievable goals.
