17 years to complete District Plan has been a gross waste of ratepayers funds.

North Shore City Council has just announced that, after 17 years of drafting, public consultation and legal actions, its first District Plan under the Resource Management Act has been finalised and is now ‘operative’.

Millions of dollars of rates-funded expenditure have been gobbled up in this incredibly extended process. Other councils around the country are in similar situations.

North Shore City ’s plan was initiated in 1992, publicly notified in 1994, followed by eight years of hearings and amendment before being adopted in part in 2002. The following seven years included numerous Environment Court appeals, High Court appeals, and plan changes. All at a huge costs to ratepayers.

The millions of dollars wasted on this exercise could have been better spent on maintaining and developing essential infrastructure, and recent rates increase to cover infrastructure ‘catch-up’ could have been avoided.

Recent changes to the Resource Management Act should help to avoid some of these situations in the future – but meanwhile Auckland ratepayers could be in for more costs as the existing eight Regional and District Plans are combined into one plan over the next five to eight years.

The new Auckland Council will need to act swiftly to contain any bureaucratic blow-out of the cost to achieve this amagamation of all these Plans.

And the Government should move with speed to introduce the next Resource Management simplification legislation to make planning documents user-friendly and significantly less costly for ratepayers and others who are involved in the planning processes.

ENDS

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