Hawke's Bay Regional council's concept for combined regional plan aims to empower community

Hawke's Bay Regional Council aims to have all its major regional plans combined into a single regional plan by 2024. Photo / Warren Buckland

Hawke's Bay Regional Council aims to have combined all its major regional plans into a single regional plan by 2024 to empower the community voice and keep up to date with changes in central government policy.

A single regional plan named Kotahi will combine and update the existing Regional Policy Statement, Regional Resource Management Plan and Regional Coastal Environment Plan into one and put new policies, planning and technical standards in place.

Regulation and policy group manager Katrina Brunton said the region faces significant environmental challenges and one of the key ways to tackle them in a way where the community feels supported and enabled to make change is through creating regional regulatory plans in partnership with the community.

"These plans are not just statements of aspiration or good intentions, rather they set the policies and rules of what can and can't happen with our region's environment."

She said the existing plans are up for review and healthy, clean water needed to be a priority under the Government's freshwater reforms, partly known as Te Mana o Te Wai

Part of Te Mana o Te Wai is the hierarchy of obligations in freshwater management- foremost is the health and wellbeing of the water, next is essential human health like drinking water, and last is other consumption for social, economic and cultural purposes.

"This provides the Hawke's Bay Regional Council an opportunity to combine all of these plans into one single plan that manages our natural and physical resource from the mountains to the sea – ki uta ki ta, now and for future generations," Brunton said.

"Our water, land, coast and air are all connected. To provide for our land, our people and our future, we must take a holistic approach to the protection of our environment."

She said the public need to be officially notified about Kotahi for public consultation by December 2024.

Brunton said Kotahi has been discussed by the regional planning committee since October 2020 and Māori committee since November 2020.

At the moment the council is in the "identify vision and values" stage of the timeline.

Brunton said this was the stage where the council could hear from the community what they care about, including their vision and values for freshwater, land and coast.

"Hearing from our community is one of the most important part of Kotahi's creation and we will be holding hui, wānanga and community drop-in meetings in the coming weeks."