Significance and Engagement Policy 2023

The Council is committed to making informed and sustainable decisions in the best interests of communities across our District. We want to ensure the decisions made reflect the aspirations of tangata whenua, residents, ratepayers, community groups and business.

To help us to make the best decisions, Council engages with our communities every day in a number of different ways. Sometimes, this is us providing information, and other times we directly seek input into our decision-making processes.

Our Significance and Engagement Policy helps us by doing two main things:

1. It outlines for the Council and the community how we decide what issues, proposals, decisions, assets and activities are significant
2. Sets out how and when communities can expect to input into council decision-making processes

Generally speaking, the more significant the issue, the greater the level of consultation or engagement.

This policy seeks to provide clarity as to when the Council will, and will not seek public participation.

What changes are we proposing?

We are proposing to add a criteria for significance under section 5.4 of the proposed policy.

This introduces a new criteria for assessing how significant a matter is in relation to the impact it may have on climate change (both adaptation and mitigation) being substantially negative.

It reads:

The impact or consequences the decision or proposal will have on climate change mitigation (through greenhouse gas emissions) or adaptation (the reduction of risk to natural hazards exacerbated by climate change) is substantially negative. A decision to not act considering known climate change risks should be treated as more significant that it would otherwise be due to forecasted implications on the community. For example, building new facilities in coastal hazard areas would be considered substantially negative.

This inclusion acknowledges the feedback we've had from locals that they wish the Council to show leadership by prioritising climate change, sustainability and environmental protection. It will also align our engagement practice with the Council's climate change policy.

This policy was last updated in 2020. At the time it noted a requirement for a further update in 2023 ahead of the upcoming Long Term Plan.

The draft policy is available to view on the Documents tab on this page. Have your say online before 5pm, Friday 18 August 2023.

Please let us know what you think through the survey below.