The council was due to meet next Tuesday and council chief executive Debbie Lascelles had concluded there was no material advantages identified that can be gained by a pause.
A group of more than 100 Gore businessmen and community leaders had signed the same letter to the council in early December asking for the proposed district plan to be delayed.
They said the plan was out of step with forecast changes to be made by central government.
The letter called the council relentless in its pursuit of a plan which would be obsolete and require further changes.
It asked for a pause of nine months, by which point there should be a clearer direction from the government.
Council had decided in December to seek staff and legal advice and indicated it would make a decision in the new year.
In the agenda for next Tuesday’s meeting, Ms Lascelles recommended to council not pausing the processing of the plan.
The plan had to be signed off by the end of August this year.
Considerable time, effort and financial resources had gone into the review of the district plan, Ms Lascelles wrote.
The public hearings process involved 158 submitters from the community and across many business and government entities with interests in infrastructure and developments in the district.
The plan was 95% completed — Ms Lascelles wrote that hearings for 44 of the 46 chapters in the plan had been completed or mostly complete.
She poured cold water on the suggestion the planned central government reforms would make the plan out of date.
"The current and upcoming resource management reforms will not significantly disrupt the proposed district plan, and in fact there will only be minimal changes required ... over the next 2-5 years in response to the anticipated legislative change," she said.
She said the majority of the key resource management reforms under way or in the pipeline were matters managed by regional councils, not district councils or address housing issues in larger urban areas.
"The expected changes to regional management of water and discharge management would appear to be the ‘red tape’ matters that the prime minister was referring to at the recent community meeting in Gore that is referred to in the pause request."
Planning advice to the council showed the reforms would have little impact on the proposed plan.
She said an up-to-date plan would be an advantage for the council with an indication a regional plan for Southland was going to happen in the next five years.
The plan process had multiple opportunities for submitters to make comment before now.
Other submitters had indicated they were against a pause.
A pause would have an impact on a proposed residential and industrial development and lead to businesses taking development elsewhere out of Gore.
There would also be an operational costs of between $150,000-$200,000 to pause the plan.
She also pointed out the minister for the environment may not approve a pause even if the council agreed to it.
