Help for landowners to meet significant TukiTuki Plan deadline

Hawke’s Bay Regional Council acknowledges that the drought crisis and Covid-19 restrictions are having a major impact on TukiTuki catchment landowners and is offering a pragmatic interim solution to help farmers meet a significant resource consent deadline of May 31 this year.

Group Manager Regulation, Liz Lambert, says while the council is seeing a legislative solution with Central Government, the resource consent deadline of May 31, 2020 for the TukiTuki Catchment Plan Change 6 still stands.

“We have developed an option that means that you can still meet the deadline without submitting a full resource consent straightaway. Instead, we ask you to fill in a minimum amount of information on an application form as a placeholder for completing the rest of the resource consent application in a few months’ time.”

“We’ve put in place this interim measure, as the Covid-19 restrictions and drought pressures are making it incredibly difficult for landowners to complete the full resource consent process. For example, service providers can’t physically go on to farms for resource consent assessments, and sub-catchment meetings aren’t being held.”

“The goal is to ensure that we collectively meet the deadline in the plan in the most straightforward way possible.”

The Regional Council asks those landowners who do have a complete resource consent application to send it in by May 31, otherwise for those people who are at a different stage of the consent process, there is now this interim option, she says.

The aim of the TukiTuki Catchment Plan Change 6 is to sustainably manage the catchment’s freshwater resources and improve its water quality. It’s a catchment-specific change to the Hawke’s Bay Regional Resource Management Plan.

For more information and to download the forms click here to go to the Tukituki Catchment page on our website.

15 April 2020

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