Regional Council adopts 2023/24 Annual Plan
Regional Council adopts 2023/24 Annual Plan
The Council adopted the 2023/24 Annual Plan Tahua ā-tau at an extraordinary meeting today (29/6/23).
The Council has a demanding year ahead as it advances key work programmes through some important milestones.
Chairman Nicol Horrell: “It’s going to be an interesting and busy year. We’ll be wanting to talk to Southlanders about the important decisions ahead to ensure they have a strong Southland flavour.”
Annual Plan work programmes relate to the priorities set in our 10-year Long-term Plan. These are: improving freshwater quality; building community resilience to climate change impacts, which are becoming increasingly evident; and improving our internal systems to ensure our work programmes deliver greater efficiencies.
This year, the proposed Southland Water and Land Plan (pSWLP) – the foundation for Southland’s regulatory approach to freshwater – is expected to conclude its journey through the Environment Court, with a number of changes.
We will be progressing a plan change (Plan Change Tuatahi) to the pSWLP with the development of limits and targets, in conjunction with the community. The recommendations from the Regional Forum will form a key foundation of this work.
“Our freshwater work programme, including the roll out of freshwater farm plans builds on a lot of good work already underway in Southland’s catchments, where many people are doing the right thing,” said chairman Horrell.
Climate change adaptation is another key focus. The Resilient River Communities projects to upgrade parts of Murihiku Southland's flood defences will continue and projects across the Mataura and Ōreti catchments are expected to be completed in the next construction season (from spring to autumn).
Nationally, there is a lot of legislative change coming to the Resource Management Act; the three-waters reform; plus the Future of Local Government review. The level of change is not yet fully known, but it will shape the council’s work in meeting our regional natural resource management responsibilities.
Like everyone, the Council is having to deal with considerably higher inflation levels than anticipated three years ago when the Long-term Plan was adopted. We are also entering the coming financial year from a situation where we absorbed higher costs in 2022/23, having held the rates at a 5% increase despite higher inflation. This is not sustainable year-on-year.
The Council further prioritised its work and reduced costs. Alongside these efforts, we had lower expenditure in some areas such as unfilled vacancies, and the welcome return of marine fee revenue as cruise ships began returning to Fiordland.
In May, the Council set the average rates increase of 6.9% for the 2023/24 financial year, in line with the most recent inflation predictions of between 6.7 and 7.2%. The increase in rates will always vary from household to household, primarily due to the variance in property values.
As this Annual Plan has no significant or material changes to what was in the Long-term Plan the Council was not required to formally consult, however feedback was invited and some was received.
“We are always interested in people’s views and if anyone has matters they’d like to raise, I encourage them to contact councillors to discuss their views,” Chairman Horrell said.
