STATUTORY AND OTHER EVALUATION REQUIREMENTS:
ANNEX 1
The Resource Management Act
Under section 35(2) of the Resource Management Act, every local authority shall monitor: 1
(2) …(b) the efficiency and effectiveness of policies, rules, or other methods in its policy statement or its
plan … and take appropriate action (having regard to the methods available to it under this Act) where
this is shown to be necessary.
(2A) Every local authority must, at intervals of not more than 5 years, compile and make available to the
public a review of the results of its monitoring under subsection (2)(b).
The timeframe that is proposed meets this 5-year requirement.2
What the One Plan said it would do
Plan monitoring and review is addressed in the One Plan at 10.2, which says that reporting
would be three-yearly (as is proposed); that the Regional Council will regularly check the
effectiveness of the policies and methods in this Plan in achieving anticipated environmental
results; and further suggests some methods for monitoring and reporting:
a. Evaluation of the Regional Council’s annual reports and the policies and methods
in the Plan to assess which policies and methods have been implemented. This
monitoring will be reported quarterly, through the implementation dashboard
showing which policies and methods have been implemented, and the rate of
progress on a sample of One Plan priority measures.
b. Evaluation of the Long Term Plan and annual reports to assess actual work done
to implement this Plan. For example, the 2015-25 LTP has a priority of improving
knowledge and understanding of the region’s waterways through science and
monitoring programmes, which will be of major benefit to the Evaluation and
ongoing Plan implementation.
1
2
Regional councils’ section 35 monitoring obligations also include - separately:
a.
The state of the environment (to the extent that is appropriate to enable the local authority to
effectively carry out its functions under this Act). At least in these early days, where there’s a lot of
focus on bedding in the policy aspects of the plan and figuring out what does or doesn’t work, it is
not intended to fully fold SOE reporting into this evaluation process; however, one is a significant
contributor to the other (for example, SOE full report to be completed in 2018 is well-timed to feed
into the evaluation ‘synthesis’ first half 2019); and Horizons science and policy teams are working to
ensure good alignment.
b.
The exercise of resource consents - which involves checking compliance with consent conditions,
the effectiveness of consent conditions, and monitoring the effect of activities on the environment.
Following delivery of the first evaluation report to Council in August 2016, subsequent reports through to 2019
would cover the Sustainable Land Use initiative, Biodiversity, Water Quantity (Allocation), other issues in the Plan
(eg, natural hazards, climate change), and other emerging issues as they might arise. The first cycle of reporting
will be completed with a synthesis report and any topic updates that are needed, prior to the local body elections
in 2019 (the One Plan having commenced in December 2014, although in practice some took effect earlier).
c. Evaluation of the results of environmental monitoring carried out under the
Regional Monitoring Strategy to assess the condition and trends of the Region’s
environment, with an emphasis on those parts of the environment where specific
work has been done to make improvements.
d. Assessment of whether changes need to be made to policies and methods where
there is slow or no progress toward achieving anticipated environmental results.
The Evaluation that is proposed covers these aspects.3
The Plan further indicates the circumstances in which a plan change might be required:
Changes to the Plan will be sought when:
(a) Plan effectiveness monitoring identifies the need to enhance progress towards achieving
anticipated environmental results; or
(b) Major resource management developments arise such as significant amendments to the RMA or
the adoption of national policy statements or national environmental standards by Government that
have major implications for the contents of this Plan; or
(c) The results of new scientific work enhance this Plan and make plan provisions more certain for
resource users.
What the Auditor-General identified as important
The Office of the Auditor-General (OAG) audited Horizons and Otago regions’ management
of freshwater resources in 2005. Design of the Evaluation can be informed by OAG
comments; they included comments on general importance of evaluating effectiveness and
efficiency of Regional Plan policies and methods, echoing section 35 of the Resource
Management Act.4
Key takeouts from that report include:
a. Good monitoring of effectiveness and efficiency should be linked to each policy
and method, and the objectives and ERAs in planning documents;
b. Procedures for doing this would ideally have been devised at the time of doing
the planning document;
c. With effectiveness and efficiency monitoring / evaluation a significant gap in
performance for Horizons in 2005, it would be desirable for the current evaluation
to do what it can to address this.
3
The Plan also envisaged that reporting would happen at the same time as reporting of Long Term Plan
outcomes for the region; whereas we now propose that the work should start immediately, and be delivered 6monthly, per topic.
4
Horizons and Otago Regional Councils: Management of Freshwater Resources (Office of the Auditor-General,
2005).