Federated Farmers: What's the long term plan

Farmers must create a long term plan.

Once every three years, councils must consult with their communities and prepare a Long Term Plan.

These plans set out a council's long-term focus, describe the activities it intends on providing and specifies which community outcomes are to be achieved.

Importantly from a ratepayers' viewpoint, these plans also need to clearly specify who is going to be footing the bill for these activities.

As 2015 is a long term plan year, all regional and district councils will have their plans out for consultation.

Up until this year, Long Term Plan documents have been lengthy with a lot of complex detail included. This proved to be a bit of a deterrent to some ratepayers getting actively or fully involved in these processes.

However, following changes to the Local Government Act 2002, it should now be simpler for ratepayers to have a say on these plans.

This year, councils release a brief 'consultation document' for feedback, with supporting information available on the council website for those who seek greater levels of detail and information.

The consultation document should provide a summary of everything the council intends to do and should clearly indicate how and which ratepayers will be expected to pay for it.

Topics ratepayers may want to provide feedback or comment on could include how they believe their regional or district council should function, what activities or services councils should provide, and what level of rates and charges they consider to be appropriate for each activity.

As ratepayers, it's your right to have a say on how the long term vision for your region or district should look. While we encourage landowners to get involved in the process, we're aware that for many, there simply won't be the time to do this.

Federated Farmers helps our members by actively submitting on and presenting hearing evidence for most council long term plans in New Zealand. Overall, we submit on about 68 long term or annual plans each year.

For us, it's an opportune time to ensure councils' intentions and directions fairly meet the needs of our members and the broader rural communities.

We will also be keeping an eye on how councils across the country approach plans this year and whether the changes the Government proposed for this important consultation are actually achieved in practice.

To keep track of when your local council is going to be releasing their plan, either ring them and ask for specific dates, or check out the council website.