There’s a growing sense of confidence about planning system reform. Who doesn’t want clearer direction, faster plans, less duplication? That’s the intent.
But across my work, from Southland to Northland, the emerging reality looks a little different and I am seeing different consistent patterns. The biggest risks throughout RMA replacement aren’t technical gaps or data issues. They’re assumptions.
Here’s my list of five big things to keep an eye on if you’re involved in resource management reform, especially as spatial planning programmes are being shaped up and launched.
1. The new system will remove ambiguity
It won’t, but it will move it to a better place. The reform will create a more directive, top-down system with national direction flowing into regional spatial plans, then into local planning. The intent is for ambiguity to be ironed out early in the plan development processes, leaving implementation simpler and more consistent.
But this means that the regional combined plans will tackle all sorts of system complexities at once. And the detail that matters most is still unsettled. National Directions and Standards are coming late, and even after they emerge some environmental limits will still need to be worked out regionally.
For the moment this leaves councils’ planning in a vacuum with an unclear statutory role and mandate. Is it clear to you in your planning domain who needs to lead these processes and who has the mandate? Waiting for clarity risks outcomes slipping away.
2. We can build on the plans we’ve already done
Maybe, but not in the way many people think. Existing plans were built under the RMA’s broad purpose and discretionary framework. The new system is anticipated to set clearer, sometimes competing national goals; tightens limits; shift decisions up to regional spatial plans; and to standardise plan content, data, and structures. It’s an entirely different operating model to the one that built the current generation of plans.
Existing pans will have to be rechecked for alignment from the bottom up to meet the Planning Bill’s different purpose. It may be easier to overwrite them and begin again because there are so many inbuilt assumptions and the alignment to the outgoing RM system goes too far into their DNA.
What’s at risk is the loss or under-utilisation of previous spatial planning work and evidence. And critically, the loss of the community voice consulted and represented in the existing plans. Regional plans may be top down planning at its finest, with minimal time for meaningful community and partner involvement.
What role will soon-to-be-redundant local existing planning documents have in your community? Are they obsolete, or can they continue as a channel for the local voice outside of statutory processes?
3. If we get the plan right, it will get delivered
This is the biggest trap. Spatial plans will carry real weight, effectively locking in settlement patterns and infrastructure needs. But delivery still depends on funding, sequencing, and institutional alignment. They are only one part of the machinery that manages changes to the built and natural environments to enable our communities to function well.
In the end its about things getting built, and projects without delivery pathways will lead to unmet expectations and loss of confidence. Over-engineered and over-planned plans risk delaying action and wasting time and effort for no outcome.
How will you ensure your planning is pragmatic but also visionary beyond the minimal statutory scope for these plans?
4. Governance will naturally align at the regional scale
It won’t. Not without intent. Reform shifts decision-making up because there are more actors, more interests, bigger trade-offs. There are misalignments between sub-regional and regional priorities due to different communities of interest and there are bound to be political misalignments.
Shared planning should result in shared priorities, but it will risk burying chronic tensions instead and seeing them re-emerge as acute issues during delivery.
How will you ensure this gets early attention at governance level with the right information and in a safe place to have honest conversations?
5. Spatial planning outcomes will line up: growth, infrastructure, environment, economics
This is where reform looks neatest with the biggest opportunity and where it may break down fastest. Functions are being split into land use and growth in the Planning Bill and environmental limits in the Natural Environment Bill. At the same time, councils are trying to align spatial plans, regional deals, “head start” initiatives, infrastructure funding tools (including new development levies approaches), constrained LTPs in a rates-capped environment, new water service delivery models (CCOs and regional entities), and many complex BAU activities.
Each has different timelines, funding models, incentives, and decision-makers and operates with national objectives with implicit tensions that can’t all be resolved in one plan. But what we’re seeing goes further. These parallel reforms are actively reshaping the playing field in the middle of the game. Spatial plans risk becoming coordination documents, trying to align decisions that are being made in parallel systems.
How will you ensure they are leading strategies with clear visions to prioritise the outcomes your communities’ limited resources focus on?
The bottom line
This reform is often framed as a speed problem. It’s not. The danger lies in locking in spatial decisions that don’t align with how funding, infrastructure, and delivery will actually work in five, ten or more years’ time.
Yes, councils will have around 15 months to notify a regional spatial plan. Yes, there will be pressure to move quickly. But in my view, we’re not designing a plan in a stable system we’re designing it while the system itself is being rebuilt.
Spatial plans will land in the middle of economic / fiscal reform, infrastructure funding reform, water service reform, and tightening council finances. All moving at the same time. That changes the risk profile completely.
Get it wrong, and the consequences can last generations: growth in the wrong places, infrastructure that can’t be funded, eroding local government finances, communities losing confidence in the system. No pressure, planners.
In my opinion the best approaches should:
focus on the decisions that unlock real-world outcomes, not on statutory wins
break down complicated issues into bite sized decision-making packages
actively align across parallel reforms, do not assume it will happen
champion communities’ voices and long term priorities through parallel reforms
look at the spatial plan, land use plan, natural environment plan as part of a wider system, not the centre of it, with a clear perspective on how they will work as an integrated planning tool set
Most importantly - be prepared to slow down where it matters most. Because under this reform, speed will be visible, but alignment is what determines whether it works in the end and this will take the time it needs.
