More than 30 community meetings were held earlier this year; thousands of people viewed information on the website, hundreds of comments were received and workshops were held with councillors - resulting in some changes to the draft chapters.

More information will be available then at districtplanproposed.ccc.govt.nz.  The priority chapters include Introduction, Strategic Directions, Contaminated Land, Transport; and parts of the Industrial, Commercial, Subdivision and Development, Residential, and Natural Hazards chapters as well as the definitions and maps associated with those chapters, and non Council designations.

Following notification of the priority chapters, there will be 30 working days for public submissions.  Submissions can be made online via the Council’s website, or using a District Plan Review submission form which will be available from Council service centres and libraries during the submission period or on request from our customer call centre.  Submissions on the priority chapters close on 8 October 2014.

Drop-in sessions will be held in early September to answer any questions you may have on the draft chapters and to provide clarification on chapter content.  You can attend any drop-in session that you wish.  Information about the dates and venues for the drop-in sessions will be available soon on the website ccc.govt.nz/districtplanreview.  I will also send you an update at the time of notification and include details of the drop-ins in that email.

The Council will write to directly affected land owners at the time of notification.

• Notification and submissions open                     27 August 2014
• Submissions close                                                        8 October 2014
• Further submission period opens                       22 October 2014
• Further submission period closes                    6 November 2014
• Further submissions published                      20 November 2014
• Hearing process begins                                             November 2014
• Panel deliberation                                                       Jan-March 2015

The dates for hearings and panel deliberations are still to be confirmed.

We expect the remaining chapters of the District Plan Review to be notified in mid 2015.

The Proposed Christchurch Replacement District Plan will be an online plan (as well as being available in hard copy format) and we are also encouraging people to make their submissions online.  We will have a video available on our website showing how to use the online plan and how to make a submission.  We will also be running brief tutorial sessions here at the Council offices in Hereford Street.  If you would like to attend one of those, please let us know.  Dates are yet to be finalised, but it is likely these will start shortly before notification of the priority chapters.

If you have any queries about the District Plan Review process (rather than content), please contact David Punselie on Ph 03 941 8527.  You can also email us on dpreview@ccc.govt.nz

Brigitte de Ronde
City Planning Unit Manager
Strategy and Planning Group
Christchurch City Council.