Partially Operative Selwyn District Plan 2020

The Council publicly notified the Proposed Selwyn District Plan on 5 October 2020. The hearings of submissions and further submissions were held between August 2021 and May 2023.

Decisions on submissions to the Proposed District Plan were publicly notified on 19 August 2023. Since this date, the Proposed District Plan is known as the ‘Partially Operative Selwyn District Plan’.

Appeals

The period for making appeals to the Environment Court on Council decisions closed on 6 October 2023.

Information on any appeals can be found on our appeals page.

An ‘Appeals’ version of the ‘Partially Operative Selwyn District Plan’ is now available showing all provisions that have legal effect and identifying the areas under appeal, where the previous district plan still applies.

*Important note: If the ePlan is not loading or displaying correctly on your device, check that you are using one of these compatible browsers: Chrome, Edge, Safari or Firefox.

To compare the ‘Appeals Version’ of the Partially Operative Selwyn District Plan with the ‘Notified Version’, you need to select the notified version to compare the appeals version against. Please refer to the ‘How to navigate the ePlan guide’ to learn how to compare versions.

The Appeals Version has been updated as appeals were resolved and more provisions became operative.

Parts of the Partially Operative Selwyn District Plan modified by the Council’s Intensification Planning Instrument to incorporate medium density residential standards (Variation 1) are operative from 28 August 2023. There is no right of appeal to the Environment Court on Variation 1 but decisions may be appealed to the High Court on a point of law.

Background on the District Plan Review

The Operative Selwyn District Plan was notified in two volumes (Rural Volume in 2000 and Township Volume in 2001), with the majority of provisions being made operative in 2008 and the entire plan becoming fully operative in 2016. Several variations and plan changes have occurred over this time and in May 2015 a full review of the Operative Plan started. The Resource Management Act requires that all operative provisions of a district plan are reviewed every 10 years.

Since May 2015 (when the full review started) Council had been looking at the rules and policies across a range of topics. It began talking to its partners and stakeholders as well as affected landowners about whether the rules worked as they were or needed to be changed, and whether they were up-to-date with changes in legislation, national and regional policy statements, and other regulations.

Following a detailed assessment, a summary of issues and options called a ‘preferred option’ report, was developed. This identified the Council’s recommended draft changes for specific topics.

In 2018, Council ran an initial public consultation on several proposed key draft changes (which came from the preferred option reports). This consultation included different topics and allowed Council to check in with the community about what they thought of the draft changes. “Are we on the right track?” was the theme of the consultation. Following this, Council reviewed the community’s feedback, and outlined what changes (if any) were made as a result of feedback, in post engagement reports.

Subsequent District Plan Committee workshops provided direction on detailed provisions that have since been integrated across chapters of the Proposed District Plan. They were also formatted into a responsive electronic planning tool (called an ePlan). The Proposed ePlan aligns with the National Planning Standards, which standardise the district plan framework and several definitions.

Public consultation on the notified Proposed District Plan ran between 5 October and 11 December 2020, with 470 submissions, covering around 7,700 individual submission points, being received. Of these, 62% of submission points were fully or partially supportive of the Proposed District Plan

The summary of submissions on the Proposed Plan was notified on 19 April 2021 and the further submission consultation closed on 7 May 2021. Due to errors in some of the summarised submission points, a further consultation period on the errata submission points was held between 31 May and 14 June 2021.

On 20 August 2022, the Council notified Variation 1 to the Proposed District Plan, being Part A of the Council’s Intensification Planning Instrument. Variation 1 incorporates medium density residential standards into the Proposed District Plan, which is a requirement of legislative changes to the RMA made by Central Government in 2021 to increase housing supply.

After completing hearings on the notified Proposed District Plan and the Intensification Planning Instrument, and receiving recommendations from the Council appointed Hearing Panels, Council’s decisions on the Proposed District Plan and the Intensification Planning Instrument were released simultaneously.

Decisions on submissions to the Proposed District Plan were publicly notified on 19 August 2023. This was released as the ‘Partially Operative Selwyn District Plan’ (Decisions Version).

Erratum to Proposed Selwyn District Plan Public Notice [JPEG, 194 KB]

The decision reports on submissions, further submissions, amendments to the Proposed Plan, Planning Maps, and reasons for the decisions, can be viewed here or on each of the individual hearing topic pages.

Decisions on the Proposed District Plan were able to be appealed to the Environment Court within 30 working days of the release of Council decisions. Decisions on the Intensification Planning Instrument cannot be appealed to the Environment Court but may be appealed to the High Court on a point of law.