Concern over deadline for standards

THE Queenstown Lakes District Council could face ‘‘continual litigation for seven years’’ if a Government deadline for implementing national planning standards is imposed.

Staff and councillors expressed disquiet about the proposed deadline before approving a council submission on the standards at a planning and strategy committee meeting on Thursday.

The Ministry for the Environment is now consulting local authorities on the first set of the draft National Planning Standards. They aim to make planning documents required by the Resource Management Act — such as councils’ district plans — more concise, simpler to prepare and easier for users to understand.

A report by senior planners Blair Devlin and Luke Place said the council supported the idea of standards that made its district plan ‘‘look and feel the same way as a district plan in any other district’’.

However, they included a discretionary standard on which the council would have to formally consult to select options and decide how they should be applied in its plans.

The ‘‘litigious nature’’ of the district’s planmaking process meant a sevenyear deadline to implement the standards was not long enough, the report said.

The council was one of several throughout the country receiving seven years from next April, rather than five years, because it was undergoing a district plan review.

Despite the extended deadline, it was possible that all appeals would not be resolved in time.

Planning policy manager Ian Bayliss said the council could get through the ‘‘tough process’’ of appeals to its district plan, only to find itself in a new round of litigation over the standards.

‘‘It’s a huge cost for local authorities — this will be a very expensive process.

‘‘The councils that are in a review process at the moment are hard done by.’’

Cr Ross McRobie said the potential for continous litigation was symptomatic of the slow pace of local government, something he found ‘‘extremely frustrating’’.

‘‘I don’t think it’s good enough to run our business this way. We’ve got to speed the process up somehow.’’

The council’s submission asks the ministry to either amend the timeframes so the sevenyear deadline begins when a plan becomes fully operative, or allows the standards to be implemented as part of the next plan review process.

That would avoid ‘‘significant monetary burden on the district’s ratepayers, who have already absorbed substantial costs associated with the existing plan review and appeal process’’.