Wading through the words:
Federated Farmers policy staff have been busy working through 2000 pages of the 900 + submissions made on the Proposed Waikato District Plan. The analysis of the submissions is important because the consultation process provides an opportunity, through further submissions, to extend support or register opposition against other parties’ positions. This provides useful feedback to council planning staff and can ultimately influence where the plan ends up. A district plan covers a huge range of topics from zoning and subdivision rules, through to controlling land use on private land to protect landscape and biodiversity values. It wont be a surprise to know that the submissions covered requests seeking a broad range of outcomes some seeking much tighter land use controls to those wanting more lenient ones and everything in between. It is important for FFNZ to take the time to wade through the words and provide Council with our considered opinion on those requests to ensure our members interests are protected .
The FFNZ further submission was lodged with Waikato District Council on 16 July 2019. You can view the plan from the Council’s website at -
Proposed District Plan (waikatodistrict.govt.nz)
March 2022 update
Federated Farmers Submissions on Proposed Waikato District Plan
Decisions on the proposed Waikato District Plan were released 17 January 2022. Federated Farmers policy staff have worked through the plan to see what improvements were made through our involvement in the process since 2017.
Key benefits from Federated Farmers involvement can be summarised as follows:
- only mapping significant natural areas (SNA) that have been ground truthed and confirmed as meeting SNA criteria;
- confirmation that any future ecological assessments will be paid for by Waikato District and Waikato Regional councils not the landowner;
- more practical vegetation clearance rules within SNAs;
- removal of the significant amenity landscape overlay which captured large areas of hill country and ridgelines and imposed building, earthworks and subdivision controls to protect the amenity of those farms;
- removal of unnecessarily complicated controls for the use and storage of hazardous substances;
- more enabling of low risk farming activities in natural hazard areas;
- no district council involvement in GMO regulation or use;
- refocused rural zone policies and rules to prioritise activities reliant on the rural zone and better management of reverse sensitivity effects;
- ensuring earthworks for rural related activities are not subject to onerous resource consent conditions.
We are very pleased with those outcomes and know they will provide a material difference to members by reducing the degree and extent of regulatory compliance required on farm. However there are some remaining areas of concern, the majority of which were introduced into the plan via the public submission process. An appeal has been lodged to the Environment Court to address these outstanding matters. We expect this next part of the process to take around two years to complete. Resource management planning processes are marathons not sprints and by the time it gets to this stage Federated Farmers is often the last party standing for farming interests. Please remind your non-member farming friends and neighbours of this fact.
More detail on the appeal can found in the attached document to the right.
Please get in touch with
Peter Matich, Senior Regional Policy Advisor if you would like to discuss the appeal in more detail by phoning 0800 327 646 or
[email protected]