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The Decisions Version has now been notified and its provisions have legal effect. It outlines the policies, rules, and regulations that will guide land use and development within our district.
The Hearing Panel reports are available below. These have been adopted as the Council’s decision. The reports are set out in order of the hearing streams and are proceeded by a preliminary report outlining statutory requirements, the hearings process and a user guide to the reports.
Here, and below is a link to a table that contains every submission and further submission. The tables set out the decision requested by each submission, the Council’s decision and the Panel report in which the matter is addressed. While every endeavour has been made to ensure these tables are accurate, there may be minor errors due to the volume of submission points.
Central Hawke’s Bay District Council advises submitters to refer to the decision report and decision, as these documents reflect the Council’s decisions on the Proposed Central Hawke’s Bay District Plan.
Copies of the decisions can also be viewed at any of the following locations at any time that those facilities are open to the public:
Notice of the decision has been served on all persons who made a submission and/or further submission.
Any person who made a submission and/or further submission may appeal the Council's decision to the Environment Court. Further details of the appeal process are available on the Council website below. Any appeal to the Environment Court must be in the prescribed form and lodged with the Environment Court (EnvironmentCourt@justice.govt.nz, PO Box 7147, Victoria Street West, Auckland 1142) within 30 working days of service of the notice of decision.
Decisions on Council's designations and Council's recommendations on designations where it is not the requiring authority are outlined in Panel Report 7D above.
Requiring Authority decisions that have been received are as follows:
General FAQs about the Proposed District Plan can be found here.
The Hearing Panel Recommendation reports contain the Panel’s recommendations on submission points in Appendix B at the end of each report. The Hearing Panel reports can be found above. These were adopted by the Council as its decision.
However, given that there were 123 submissions and 29 further submissions containing 2,500 individual we have created a searchable table for submitters here.
This table states your submission point, whether it is accepted, rejected or accepted in part and which decision report the matter is addressed in.
“Accept in part” is used where only part of the submission is accepted, or where an alternative solution has been developed by the Hearings Panel to the concerns raised.
The Hearing Panel Reports provide tracked changes to the Proposed District Plan chapters which show how their recommendations have changed the Plan.
The eplan, found here also has a function called ‘compare’ that demonstrates how provisions have changed. However, the compare tool is not flawless and is a guide only.
For the planning maps on the eplan, users will be able to toggle between the Proposed District Plan version and the decisions version to see the changes made.
Designations have a slightly different process to the District Plan Review process, which runs in parallel. Council has accepted the recommendations on its own designations but cannot make the decisions on designations that are not managed by Council. Requiring Authorities (those that are legally entitled to apply for and manage designations) now have 30 working days to respond to Council’s recommendations with their decisions on their own designations. Once Council have received their decisions the Proposed District Plan will be amended to include these.
The decision version of the maps is here.
The rules can be found in the decision version of the Proposed District Plan which is here.
The Central Hawke’s Bay District Council appointed a six-person panel to hear and make recommendations on submissions on the Proposed District Plan:
More information about the Commissioners can be found here.
Not all six commissioners sat on each hearing.
The Panel made recommendations to the Council, which were received and endorsed by Council before becoming the Council’s decisions. There are some minor differences between the Panel’s recommendations which involve the correction of minor errors or slight changes in wording of rules.
The Proposed District Plan will not become operative until any appeals received on the decisions have been resolved.
Parts of the Proposed District Plan may be treated as operative once the period for appeals closes. Once all appeals have been received and considered, Council will be able to determine whether there are any provisions that are not subject to appeal and therefore must be treated as operative.
If a rule must be ‘treated as operative’, the corresponding rule (if any) in the operative district plan falls away and no longer applies.
An ‘appeals’ version of the Proposed District Plan has been placed on the Council’s website. This version highlights all of the provisions, including rules and maps, that are subject to appeals.
Where Council is satisfied that a rule is not expressly referred to in an appeal and could not be altered as a consequence of relief sought on another provision in an appeal, it can be treated as operative and Council will publish this information on the website.
When an appeal is filed with the Environment Court, the appellant is required to provide a copy of the notice to everyone who made a submission about the subject matter of the appeal, within five working days. Appellants often send their notice of appeal to a wider group of submitters than may actually be necessary.
Please read the notice of appeal carefully as it may be on a topic that you are interested in.
It is possible that an appellant has not correctly identified all the submitters, so it pays to check the appeals.
If you are an appellant or a section 274 party on a particular provision or matter, you will be part of the appeal process and will know when those appeals have been resolved, either through agreement endorsed by the Environment Court or after a Court hearing. For all other provisions, Council will prepare an appeals version of the Proposed District Plan which will track which provisions are subject to appeal and which ones are operative. This will be regularly updated as the appeals process progresses, so keep checking the Council website for progress updates.
We will put all the appeals on the Appeal page, here.
An appeal is filed with the Environment Court where a submitter or further submitter disagrees with any aspect of the decision. It could be an appeal on a single rule such as the maximum height of buildings, or a broader topic. However, an appeal cannot request the withdrawal of the entire plan or appeal against the plan as a whole.
The appeal process is different to the previous process which was managed by Council and the independent Hearings Panel. Appeals are managed by the Environment Court. This means that the Court determines the process, although it often seeks input from Council (and its advisors) and all other parties (both appellants and interested parties).
Any person who made a submission or further submission on a provision or part of the Proposed District Plan may appeal to the Environment Court in respect of that provision or matter.
Any person who made a submission on a proposed policy statement or plan may appeal to the Environment Court in respect of the decisions of the local authority on submissions, in respect of provisions or matters to which their submission referred.
A notice of appeal must be prepared in accordance with Form 7 and lodged with the Environment Court within 30 working days of the decision being notified.
More information can be found here.
Appeals can take some time to resolve, although the Environment Court tries to ensure progress is being made by imposing timeframes for reporting back to the Court. There are a number of avenues that appeals can be worked through, such as negotiation and Court-assisted mediation, and parties are encouraged to explore these before an appeal progresses to a Court hearing.
Yes, parts of the Proposed District Plan could change through the appeals process, depending on the nature of the appeals.
If you have received notice of an appeal and you made a submission on the subject matter of that appeal, you can give notice to the Environment Court that you wish to join the appeal by becoming what is called ‘a section 274 party’. A section 274 party to an appeal is someone who wishes to support or oppose an appeal point.
If you did not make a submission on the subject matter of an appeal, you may be eligible to become a party to an appeal if you meet the specific criteria. Not everyone can become a party to an appeal. To be a section 274 party, you must be either:
Any eligible person who wishes to become a party to any appeal under section 274 of the Resource Management Act must give notice to the Environment Court, the Central Hawke’s Bay District Council and the appellant within a further 15 working days after the period for lodging appeals ends.
If you are considering becoming a section 274 party, we suggest that you seek your own legal advice.
Clause 16 of the Resource Management Act allows Council to make amendments of minor effect, or to correct any minor errors. Any errors that are more significant can only be corrected through an appeal or a variation to the Plan.
The Proposed District Plan has been formatted to adhere to the National Planning Standards (a set of standards that intend to provide national consistency for the structure, form, definitions and electronic accesibility for plans prepared under the Resource Management Act 1991, such as District Plans).
Directions in the format standard requires that if an additional or new provision is added the next sequential number must be used or if a provision is deleted the adjacent provision numbers unaffected by the deletion must retain their existing numbers.
The above standards have been adopted for higher order numbering of provisions but for sub-clauses and lists within provisions the numbering has remained sequential even if provisions have been inserted or deleted. There may be some renumbering undertaken before the Proposed District Plan is made operative.
Yes, you can talk to one on the phone by ringing Council on 06 857 8060; or you can email us.
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