Consultants working on document
CONSULTANTS instead of Otago Regional Council staff members are working on a major planning document for the council that was recently stopped in its tracks in the High Court.
Policy and science general manager Anita Dawe said ‘‘about six’’ consultants were on the council project because there were unfilled vacancies at the council at present.
Alongside the consultants the council’s regional policy statement team leader was also working on the regional statement, and a general manager was providing operational oversight, Ms Dawe said.
At a publicexcluded meeting this week, councillors considered where to draw the line between ‘‘freshwater and nonfreshwater parts’’ of the statement.
This work became necessary after a July High Court decision, by Justice Gerald Nation, that struck down a plan by the council to advance its entire proposed regional policy statement through a new accelerated freshwater hearings process.
Only those policies for managing Otago’s natural and physical resources that dealt directly with freshwater could use the process, introduced in 2020 to address freshwater quality decline, Justice Nation said.
Notifying the regional statement in June last year, and then the land and water plan at the end of next year, were major milestones the council agreed to as it works to meet recommendations from Environment Minister David Parker after a 2019 investigation.
The regional statement is a foundation document for the council’s forthcoming land and water plan, and it was supposed to be operative before the land and water plan was notified.
After Justice Nation’s ruling Mr Parker advised the council the judgement required the council to renotify those parts of its proposed regional statement that it determined were parts of a freshwater planning instrument.
In order to ensure the timelines he imposed were ‘‘not unreasonably tight’’, he gave the council until September 30 to renotify the regional statement.
Ms Dawe said the number of people on the project had not changed as a consequence of the High Court decision.
She said using consultants rather than staff would change the budgeted cost to the council but an amount of the shortfall was offset by staff vacancies.
Due to a number of factors the council had four policy staff leave the organisation over the last few months, she said.