More than 18 months after first starting the final hearing on the Dunedin City Council’s second generation plan came to an end yesterday.
Since May last year the hearings panel of chairman David Collins, deputy chairman Gary Rae, Cr Aaron Hawkins, Jinty MacTavish, Cr Kate Wilson and Cr David Benson Pope have heard more than 800 submissions on the plan, which was released in November 2015.
The council’s district plan sets the rules covering everything from flooding, landslip threats to the reuse of heritage buildings and where residential development can take place. The plan was notified in 2015 and the Resource Management Act (RMA) required a decision to be made two years later but local authorities were allowed to extend that period.
In September the council’s planning and environment committee approved an extension to September next year.
Public notification of the plan was now expected in the middle of 2018.In his memo to the council and submitters earlier this year, Mr Collins said Dunedin city was one of the largest territorial authorities in New Zealand by both area and population and the plan had to address some important and complicated resource management issues.
For some topics the panel found it necessary to go back to the submitters and council officers for more information and assessment and where more significant information was needed the panel had decided to reconvene hearings, Mr Collins said.
Changes made to the RMA in September also needed to be considered, he said.
All of the panel’s decisions will be issued at the same time to avoid any confusion and the panel aimed to complete them by early next year.
After the decisions were made, council staff would need to prepare and produce a new plan and then prepare a plain English document so the key changes could be communicated to the public. There would also be an appeal period and the new provisions in the plan would not come into effect until that was completed, he said.
