Day Two Session One: Writing issues in plans
Discussion
Regionally significant issues and testing issues
Day two commenced with a question asked at the conclusion of the first day of how to determine whether an issue is of regional significance. Suggestions as to what measures could be used included:
- If the issue is, or is closely aligned with, an outcome identified through the community outcome (LTCCP) process – acknowledging that the outcomes often had to be refined to be useful (as had taken place in Southland).
- Issues identified in technical reports as having a significant effect on the environment (for example, coastal erosion or loss of biodiversity) – noting that some issues may not be seen as important by the community (possibly because they are not aware of them) but still need to be managed.
- Issues that affect more than one territorial authority or were region-wide
However, within a region there could be variations as to how important some issues were. These differences need to be provided for. It is also sometimes difficult to engage the whole community at the regional level due to geographic size, population size, diversity or a combination of these considerations.
Karen Bell noted that often the community can identify issues, and can sometimes provide non-regulatory solutions to resolving them. She cited the 0800 SMOKEY hotline in Auckland as an example. This started a short discussion based around the need to test issues before putting them into planning documents.
Questions needed to be asked of each issue included:
- Is the issue real or perceived? (Sometimes this may involve engaging with the community or commissioning technical reports).
- Is the issue significant?
- Is the issue a Resource Management Act 1991 issue?
- Is the plan the most appropriate vehicle for dealing with the issue?
It was suggested that the Ministry for the Environment could develop a checklist that would help people decide the significance of an issue and whether it is appropriate for a council to deal with it.
Updating guidelines on writing issues
Issue identification and issues in plans
Discussion opened with an acknowledgement that current guidance preceded the 2003 and 2005 amendments to the Resource Management Act, and had its origins in the mid 1990s. Law and practice has moved on since that time.
Before focussing on the issues themselves, a comment was raised that plan provisions in general should follow some basic principles to assist their focus and workability. Suggestions for these included:
- Provisions should conform to SMART principles (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, Timeframes)
- Checking issues using the 5 whys (starting with the symptom and working back to the cause by asking “why” following each answer) – it provides a useful way of getting to the true, underlying issues, instead of dealing with the symptoms.
- Asking “who”, “what”, “where” and “when” in regard to provisions as a check on clarity.
Greg Hill noted that issues are still mandatory in a regional policy statement but neither regional councils nor territorial councils needed to include them in plans. Regardless of this, every council would still need to go through the process of identifying issues before they could address them. Issues need to be prioritised according to significance and how they relate to the purpose of the Resource Management Act 1991. It was suggested that objectives could be written in a way that incorporated issues so that they were more self explanatory (thereby enabling the issue statement to be omitted entirely), but there appeared little enthusiasm among those present to do this.
Pam Gare said that issues in plans needed to be seen as being part of a wider picture. Issues could be derived from non-Resource Management Act plan sources, but equally some Resource Management Act issues could be addressed by plans and projects outside a Resource Management Act plan. It was noted that LTCCPs, land transport management plans, reserve management plans, and annual plans (among others) all had the ability to assist in addressing Resource Management Act related issues to varying degrees.
Regional and local significance
The proposition was put that regional policy statements should deal with significant issues for the region. Regional plans and district plans would then fill the role of implementing parts of the regional policy statement while also dealing with more focussed, refined, or specific issues for the region or relevant district. There appeared to be no disagreement with this suggestion. However, it was suggested that Ministry guidance should be updated to reflect that issues in regional policy statements would be different to those found in regional and district plans and that examples of each should be provided (while taking into account that issues are not mandatory in plans).
The idea that issues in a regional policy statement could be different to those in a plan, but that a regional policy statement had to be given effect to raise the point that issues may need to be prioritised in some way. This was not only to establish which are of higher significance, but also assist circumstances where management regimes for dealing with one issue run into conflict with management solutions for another issue. It was suggested that guidance from the Ministry for the Environment on how to prioritise issues would be helpful.
Explanatory statements and issues
There was debate as to the length of issues and use of explanatory statements. While there was general agreement that issues needed to be clear and concise, there was concern that short issue statements may insufficiently relay the context within which the issue was set. It was suggested that case law may provide some indication of what use was made of issue statements by the Courts and whether lengthy issues and explanations were any better than short ones. Some councils relied heavily on explanations accompanying issues to provide the context of the issue, particularly in preceding before the Environment Court. The context could also be helpful in assessing whether the issue was still relevant some years later (though it was noted by others that issues can also be deleted or amended via plan changes to keep them relevant). The suggestion that explanations accompanying issues should be only one or two paragraphs in length had a mixed response. However the group generally agreed that the use/length of explanatory statements should be minimised, but that councils should retain the discretion to include explanations in their plans as required (such as when issues were complex, many faceted, or had close relationships with other issues).
Key points
- There is a need to test the significance of issues before incorporating them into plans (ie is the issue real? Is it an Resource Management Act 1991 issue? etc).
- The regional policy statement must address regionally significant issues while regional plans and district plans address issues that are within their responsibilities. The latter may include ‘refined’ or more geographically specific adaptations of issues in the regional policy statement. Regardless, all plans will need to implicitly or explicitly identify what the issues are in order to manage them.
- The use of explanatory material accompanying ‘issues’ is at the discretion of the individual council and need to be based on a case-by-case consideration. If used, explanatory material needs to be kept short, focussed and worded so as not to contradict the issue statement itself.
- State clearly what the issue is and where it applies.
- Attention needs to be paid to the relative priority of each issue. If a management technique to address two issues unavoidably clash, which takes priority?
Questions for possible follow up in guidance note
- Who is the community the issue applies to? Who constitutes the community?
- When do regional or district plans need to be reviewed, once the regional policy statement has been amended?
- How is information or data important to defining issues which may be held by other parts of the local authority captured (for example, that from engineers or strategic planners)?
- The guidance note needs to start with information on the identification of issues and then move onto the difference between issues in regional policy statements and plans.
- More examples need to be provided in future guidance notes. Examples of regional policy statements as well as plan policies will need to be provided as it appears they will differ more noticeably post the Resource Management Amendment Act 2005.
Last updated: 26 October 2007
