Don’t forget to send your feedback in by mid-October

Yes more consultations to do and plenty more to come in the Planning and Environment spaces. with that, Christmas will become 6 weeks of telling Chrome to deliberately block anything to do with Planning (except Cities Skylines 2) on the threat of the rig being thrown out the window it has been that much of a time over the last two years. But that aside as a Planner, the Ministry has asked for feedback on a piece of major Planning work with the National Policy Direction. The National Policy Direction is the second tier Planning document that comes in right after the Planning, and Natural Environment Acts themselves. The purpose of the NDP is to act as the central guidance bridge between the legislation, the other National Directions (National Policy, and Environment Standards) and the implementation through the Combined Plans with the Standardised Zones.

Now the National Policy Direction that is open for feedback as of this post can be found here: Testing the approach to National Policy Direction. I have written about the paradoxes that this draft NDP version creates here: Illustrative National Policy Direction = Confusion, Contradictions, and Paradoxes (But it can be fixed).

A summary of the NDP paradoxes:

Thus I have given my feedback to the Ministry as you can read (and download) below.

Note the caveat in bold red in the Executive Summary; for the paradoxes to be fully removed both Clause 4 and 11 of the incoming Planning Act need to be remedied first. If they are not remedied then the paradoxes will remain through to National Direction. And once you have paradoxes entrenched through National Direction it means very long dates in the Environment Court to try and get interpretations to remedy the paradoxes as they will flow down into your Combined Plans (a Combined Plan is the combination of a Spatial Plan and a Land use Plan in a single document). Remembering the Combined Plans is where the Planners, public, decision makers, residents, farmers, and businesses interact with the Planning system!

With the caveat on Clauses 4 and 11 from the Planning Act noted you can see how the changes I have made to the NDP will continue to allow the basic functions of private property to function but not at the expensive of collective public welfare. Public Welfare also includes both human and physical environments. If the changes were to be carried through the next stage is having Standardised Zones drafted to reflect the Reconstructed National Policy Direction.

We will see how this goes as the Ministry will consider the feedback to the NDP then release a second version next year for consultation again before it is finalised. With that there will also be an election and that means everything could be up ended yet again. Ah the life of a Planner is never quiet nor straight forward!