Proposed District Plan hearings process
Proposed District Plan hearings process
These FAQs are designed to help you understand the hearings process that the Proposed District Plan must follow, as well as provide key information on the process.
No. Hearings are an opportunity to speak directly to the Hearings Panel about your submission, if you wish.
If you choose not to attend, your submission will still be fully considered.
You will need to advise the Hearing Administrator, 20 working days prior to attending the hearing that you wish to provide written or spoken evidence in Māori. This is required to ensure we can support that request by providing an interpreter.
You will need to advise the Hearing Administrator, 20 working days prior to attending the hearing that you need to present your submission in NZ Sign Language. This is required to ensure we can support that request by providing an interpreter.
The Council will tell you the date and time of the hearing at least 25 working days before the hearing begins.
You can start getting ready well before then, preparing and practising your statement and gathering your evidence.
Here are a few tips to help you prepare for the hearing:
The statement you read out at the hearing will expand on the points you’ve made in your written submission. Your statement might include examples that illustrate some of the points in your submission, or comments about the recommendations in the Council Officer’s report.
If you would like to bring additional information to the hearing in support of your original submission, you will need to prepare this in time for the hearing.
If you would like an expert to give evidence on your behalf, they will need to make their evidence available to all submitters before the hearing. This is called pre-circulation of evidence.
Evidence is anything that backs up your statement.
Evidence can be oral, written or visual – you can use photographs and drawings as evidence.
Evidence should focus on facts, not emotions, and be directly relevant to the submission.
More information about how to do this will be made available closer to the date of hearings. For more information you can also download the Ministry for the Environment guide for appearing at a Council Plan or Plan Change Hearing.
Because there is a large volume of information to be considered by the Hearings Panel, it would take too long to read all of it during the hearing itself.
The Hearings Panel will read everything in advance and use the hearing time primarily for asking questions. This will help streamline the hearing process.
Submitters’ evidence, including expert evidence, should be circulated 15 working days before the hearing.
Submitters who intend to call expert witnesses must ensure expert evidence is available before the hearing.
The Council Officer’s section 42A report and evidence from experts will be publicly available on the Council website before the hearing.
At the hearing itself, submitters who do not have experts can bring along additional information to support their original submission; this does not have to be made available in advance.
After all submitters have been heard on one topic, the Hearings Panel will pause to review the submissions and evidence they have heard.
At the end of the hearings process, the panel will deliberate on all submissions and evidence and make a recommendation to Council on issues related to the Proposed Plan.
The Council will make a final decision on accepting the recommendations.
This information has been provided based on Hearing Panel directions. This process may be updated as hearings progress.
If you indicated in your submission that you did not wish to attend a hearing you will not be invited to a pre-hearing meeting or a hearing.
However, your submission will still be fully considered by the Hearing Panel. You are still welcome to attend the hearings as an observer as they are open to the public.
This is a report written by an independent Council Officer (set out in section 42A of the RMA). In this report the Council Officer evaluates the issues raised in submissions and makes recommendations to the Hearings Panel.
Each hearing topic will have an associated section 42A report, which will be made available on Council website 20 working days before each hearing.
The report is one of several sources of evidence the Hearing Panel considers in making their decision, alongside information provided by submitters and evidence from their experts.
All information and evidence provided is considered equally by the panel.
The Hearings Panel can ask that ‘expert conferencing’ happens before and possibly during the hearing. When a number of submitters have engaged experts on the same subject and those experts do not agree on certain things, the panel can ask that these experts meet and try to come to agreement.
Any areas of agreement and disagreement are recorded and provided to the Hearing Panel – as an appendix to the Council Officer’s section 42A report.
The Hearings Panel’s role is to consider submissions and evidence on Proposed District Plan.
Once all points have been heard, the Hearings Panel will make recommendations to Council about changes to the Proposed District Plan. The Council will make the final decisions based on the recommendations received. This follows the process outlined in the Resource Management Act 1991 (RMA).
The Panel Chair has issued the following direction on how hearings will proceed.
An expert is a person who is recognised in their field based on qualifications or experience.
It is important to note that the panel will only accept ‘expert evidence’ from someone who is both qualified and independent.
This means that if you are the submitter, your submission cannot be considered ‘expert evidence’ because you are not independent.
Any expert must comply with the Environment Court of New Zealand Practice Note 2014 Part 7 Expert Witnesses code of conduct.
You are responsible for your own costs, such as travel to and from the hearing, time off work, and any legal or professional fees.
The following people have the right to speak at a hearing:
Any submitter who did not request to be heard or anyone attending the hearing does not have the right to speak.
The Council Officer does not have an automatic right to speak but is commonly invited to do so by the chair of the Hearings Panel.
The panel will consist of independent commissioners and elected Councillors who are accredited commissioners. Mark Farnsworth has been confirmed as the Panel Chair but as of 26 September 2025, the remaining commissioners have not yet been confirmed.
Hearing commissioners are selected because they have the right mix of skills, legislative knowledge and familiarity with the district and wider region. The independent commissioners are chosen from the Council approved “Independent Commissioners List”. All members of the hearings panel must be accredited under the ‘Making Good Decisions’ programme which provides training in Council’s functions, responsibilities, and powers under the RMA.
A quorum of two is required for any hearing, with the Chair having the casting vote if required.
Generally all submitters will be allocated up to 15 minutes to speak at a Hearing and the Panel will use their discretion on the day if slightly more time is required. Please refer to Sections 11 – 14 of Direction 3 for more details.
Hearings are expected to take 12-15 months, depending on the number of submitters who wish to appear before the panel and the complexity of the issues being considered.
All of the submission points have been coded to a plan topic. If you stated in your submission that you wish to be heard at the hearing, you will be invited to the hearing(s) on the topic(s) that your submission relates to.
You may need to attend more than one hearing if your submission covers multiple topics.
To efficiently manage submitters’ attendance time at the hearing, each hearing day will be divided into four sessions, and submitters will be allocated one session.
Precise “appointment times” will not be allocated.
Hearing schedules will be posted on the Council website as soon as they are available, but at least 10 working days prior to the commencement of the hearing of that topic.
You don’t have to come for the whole day if you don’t want to or if your other commitments don’t allow it. Hearings are open to the public to observe and there will be an area where you can sit and listen for as long as you like. When it is your turn, you will be asked to come forward and speak to your submission. At this stage, you should introduce yourself and anyone who may be appearing with you.
Following introductions, the Panel Chair will ask you to speak to your submission and you will have 15 minutes to briefly summarise the main points of your submission along with any recommendations.
You may want to share information in support of your submission that will assist the Hearings Panel to understand your submission.
Because of time constraints and the fact that the Hearings Panel will have already studied your submission, you should not read your submission out.
Please provide electronically any supplementary information to the Hearing Administrator prior to the hearing and bring at least ten copies to a submission hearing.
After you present your submission, the hearings panel will usually ask questions to clarify points in your submission. If there are any other people appearing with you, you may wish to call on them to answer questions.
Sometimes the hearings panel will ask for additional information during the hearing. If you agree to provide the information, you should forward two hard copies (or one electronic copy) of each item of information requested to the Hearing Administrator by an agreed date.
More information on this can be found on the quality planning website or in the Ministry for the Environment Plan Change Hearings Guide.
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