The timeline for developing and hearing the rest of the Queenstown Lakes District Council proposed district plan has been amended and some projects deferred until new national Resource Management Act planning standards have been implemented.
Planning and Strategy Committee chairman Tony Hill requested a "very unusual" extraordinary meeting of the committee, held yesterday, to discuss the timeframes for the long-running plan, the first stage of which was notified in August 2015.
To date, 101 appeals had been lodged with the Environment Court against stage one decisions and 532 third party appeals had been lodged.
Those had been reviewed and separated into 1065 separate appeal points and sequenced for mediation and hearings.
Stage two decisions were expected in the first quarter of next year.
Yesterday, the committee confirmed the amended timeline for review and notification of the third stage, which covered nine separate topics, including affordable housing and inclusionary zoning; industrial zones; and Three Parks, the latter of which would require "hundreds and hundreds of hours of work", planning and policy manager Ian Bayliss said.
His report said that stage would be notified by next July for hearings in October and November.
Decisions were expected in April or May 2020.
Another eight components of the operative district plan had been deferred until 2020, or such time as the council implemented the Government’s National Planning Standards, which would standardise how district plans were done under the RMA.
Components deferred included the Frankton Flats, Kingston Village, Arrowtown South and Mt Cardrona Special zones.
Mr Bayliss expected the new standards to be implemented in April but the council was not likely to implement them until the following year.
"We’d like to implement National Planning Standards in 2020 after some of that grief has been had by other councils ... we want to be a fast follower, rather than a trailblazer," Mr Bayliss said.
