From our Chair: Gearing up for the Annual Plan
With 2025 now in full swing, the summer break may already be feeling like a distant memory. I do hope you found time to rest, unwind, and pack in some quality time with friends and whānau.
With our Councillors’ feet now firmly under the desk, thoughts have turned to this year’s first major piece of work – the adoption of the draft Annual Plan and consultation document.
To be clear, we’re still committed to our Long-Term Plan (LTP). We heard you last year when you told us your priorities, and the LTP continues to be our guiding document for the next 10 years. We’re pressing ahead with the majority of this work, including:
- uplift in investment for an efficient and effective resource consent processing service
- working with communities to protect priority habitats
- work to manage invasive pests like wallabies and wilding conifers.
We are also committed to maintaining our flood protection infrastructure – increasing flood resilience across the region with funding through measures like the district-wide rate we’ve introduced in Waikirikiri/Selwyn.
The Annual Plan just allows us to rejig things if circumstances change, and hones in on the specific activities and budget for the upcoming year.
Have your say on bus zone structures
Craig Pauling, Chair, Environment Canterbury
As we signaled in our LTP, delivering on some of our work was dependent on central government funding – particularly around public transport. Now that we have greater clarity of what’s available (or what’s not), it’s clear we need to rethink how and when our work to provide a modernised public transport service goes ahead.
One of our proposals involves fare structures for Greater Christchurch – noting that we already set the fares for Greater Christchurch late last year, so our questions will be around the zone structure, not price.
Alongside this, we’re responding to community feedback by proposing a trial service connecting Darfield, Kirwee and West Melton with Rolleston, which would be funded by a new targeted rate. To meet surging demand for services between Rolleston and Christchurch city, we’re also considering using money already budgeted for to make improvements to the Route 85 direct service.
There are other public transport items within the consultation document that you might be interested in including PT Futures (an investment programme aimed at improving our entire public transport network ), Mass Rapid Transit (moving people faster and more reliably on a dedicated route), regional rail, network safety, cruise ship connections and Total Mobility.
While we’re consulting on our Annual Plan, we’ll also be wanting to know what you think about a few changes we’re proposing to our consent fees and charges schedule – in particular, deposits and staff charges relating to resource consents.
Lower rates rise on the cards
While it may be disappointing to have to hold off on some of our plans, it does mean the rates rise will likely be lower than we had signalled in the LTP.
This is partly due to a concerted effort by Council to keep rates reasonable, and also a consequence of the fact that we simply can’t do some of the work we wanted to because of funding constraints.
You’ll have your first chance to view the draft Annual Plan and consultation document later in the month, when it’s published on our website alongside the agenda for the 26 February Council meeting.
Once Councillors give both documents the green light for consultation (subject to any changes they may decide on), you can then have your say formally.
Rest assured, public feedback plays an important part in shaping our final decisions, so we’d really like to know what you think.
You’ll hear more from us following Council’s decision on 26 February.
Mā te tika o te toki o te tangere, me te tohu o te panaho, ka pai te tere o te waka i ngā momo moana katoa.
By designing and shaping the keel of the waka to perfection, your canoe will overcome obstacles.