Plans 'Inadequate' - Gubmint to CCC

Response to a Stuff article:  Govt-slams-planning-changes-as-inadequate

The plannerista do not understand four fundamental things about our world:

1 - the RMA talks only about Effects of any activity.  There is nothing, zip, zilch, nada, about spatial Zones and other squiggles on maps.  Zones are an artifact of the old Town and Country Planning Acts which were repealed coupla decades ago.  Time the real intent of the RMA, there from Day 1 - to measure Effects and effects alone - was recognised in practise.

2 - Economics 101.  Several effects:

2a:  Zoning (say a rural/urban boundary) immediately causes massive economic value movements:  urban zoned land completely unimproved is worth around 10 times rural land.  Guess who pays the difference?  Guess who benefits from the unearned increment?

(This is, BTW,  a prime driver of housing unaffordability:  your 600 sq m section is worth, at rural land prices of $50K/ha, allowing 1/3 loss to roads, reserves etc, around $4,550.  Guess who Pays)

2b:  Time=money - a fact universally acknowledged, especially by your Banker.  Yet planning, consenting, inspecting and other Council flapdoodlery cheerfully injects massive Time into processes.  This causes costs but, quelle surprise, not to the Councils.  So they have zero incentive to minimise Time, yet are oblivious to the costs caused elsewhere.  Ask any builder or developer what these delays cost.  Guess who Pays?

2c:  There is a massive number of staff, all beavering away at monstrosities like the District Plans.  This has two results, neither useful.  One is that rates and/or recoveries need to fund a large staff base.  Guess who Pays?  The second is that very little actual value is added from all this busywork.  Take a single-storey residential build.  The risk is absolutely minimal:  no-one was killed in the quake sequences because of catastrophic structural failure (exogenous factors, chimneys and URM excepted) in a single-storey house, yet most were either unconsented (too old) or lightly consented (1950's to 1980's).  Added value is negligible, cost is substantial.  Guess who pays?  A risk-based approach would be preferable.  Both of these outcomes can be classed as Deadweight in an economic sense (ask Dr Google for a definition).

3:  Plans. regs, and other screeds of paper, have become so voluminous that even the Plannerista cannot always follow them.  The Plans are frequently outmoded, internally inconsistent, or simply badly expressed.  The response is - always - "well, this stuff is So Complex that we recommend you use Consultants, have a long series of Pre-Application Meetings, and we'll come to some arbitrary decision in six or seventeen months".  Guess who Pays.

4:  The pity of it all is that, for all the Planning, Planners and Plans, they still don't understand that Councils compete with one another.  While CCC spnds $33m on the Plan Revamp, Waimak, Selwyn. Ashurton and Hurunui DC's are busy eating CCC's lunch, as evidenced by consents issued, population shifts, and expressed human preferences.  After all, why subject yourself to a Planning Nightmare, when just across yet another squiggle on a map, a much easier future awaits?  Preferences trump Plans.....

Now, what would a sensible Plan say?

Build anything Anywhere, subject only to the RMA and Building Acts.

But that is far too sensible, and besides, scores of Planners have a Patch to Protect.

Theirs.

Guess who Pays?