Ms Mary Henchy:

On the issue of the ten-year plan, the sector is strongly of the opinion that to push it out from six years would be extremely advantageous for the delivery of the plan. Six years is a short timeline. We are not doing a variation of the plan at the moment, but moving forward local area plans that are included in the development plan. That is really to the point. We prepared our development plan and it was passed by the members last March. We are still going through judicial review of a number of matters in the plan. That is taking up a significant amount of resources. Our forward planning team is also working on active land management, residential zoned land tax, RZLT, and other pieces of work while balancing bringing forward three local area plans. If a six-year plan were in place, we would only have the guts of three years to deliver the aspirations of the plan and then we would be back into the job of preparing and delivering the next plan. The Act states we have two years to deliver it, but really, to be ready to advise councillors, members and so on, we have to look a year out from that. We are then looking at a confined timetable of two and a half years to work on delivering a huge document in which members invest significantly. I concur with everything that was said here. The development plan is the contract with the people but we need time to deliver it and to bed it in. The nature of planning is that it is looking ahead. I would not be nervous about the idea of a ten-year plan. I would welcome it with the possibility to review.