RMA fortnightly kōrero7 June 2018 Welcome to another RMA kōrero.“When is a plan a plan? Sounds simple right? Well sort of. Let me explain, to do this lets first explore what the definition of a plan is. The all seeing eye of Uncle Google says a plan is “a detailed proposal for doing something or achieving something”, when this is placed in an RMA context a plan is simply a way of managing natural and physical resources either at a district level or a regional level. Plans have a shelf life; they must be updated and changed to represent the needs, goals and emerging challenges for each region. They are reviewed every ten years. The terms commonly used to refer to plans at different stages are 'transitional plan', 'operative plan' and 'proposed plan'. So a proposed plan is not operative? Then is it transitional? No in order to make the operative threshold the proposed plan will only be 'operative' when the plan is made operative under clause 20 of Schedule 1 of the RMA. Basically this means it has gone through the full plan preparation process including:
A council is required to publicly notify the fact that the plan has been made operative Understanding where a plan is in its life cycle helps applicants and the community understand what rules will apply to any given activity. Let’s explore a couple of questions. When do the rules in the Proposed Plan have legal effect?All rules in the Proposed Plan have immediate legal effect What rules apply – the Proposed Plan or the operative plans?Both, until the Proposed Plan rules are operative, the rules in the Proposed Plan and an operative regional plan apply. It means that applicants need to consider rules in the Proposed Plan and the rules in the existing operative plans (Air, Water and Soil and Coastal in the case of Regional council’s plans). What does ‘legal effect’ of rules mean?It means that if an applicant is applying for resource consent, they may need to apply under both the current operative plan(s) and the Proposed Plan. The activity status ie: permitted, controlled, discretionary, restricted discretionary or prohibited) nature of an application is then set by the most stringent rule in the different plans. If a new plan is notified and an application is already with the council, the new rules still apply but the activity status is fixed to that of the operative plan under which the application was first submitted. It also means that if they want to carry out a new activity that is a permitted activity, they may need to comply with the permitted rules and their conditions in both (all) plans – both the operative plan(s) and the Proposed Regional Plan. Decisions are made on applications based on the policies in both the operative and proposed plan(s), and introduces an additional layer of complexity to the process, but we will leave that to the next RMA korero. I hope you have found this fortnights RMA kōrero informative. And just like the planning documents, this writing needs planning because a goal without a plan is a wish and wishes don’t write about the RMA I’m guessing. I wanted to acknowledge Daniel Smith (Consents team leader) for his contribution to this kōrero tino reka ehoa ! As always, and until next time, always remember it's ka pai to RMA kōrero !! Ma te wa |