The Milford Opportunities Project received a good response in the recently completed second round of public consultation, according to Keith Turner, chair of the Milford Opportunities Governance Group.

“About 470 submissions were received, including 50 in the field of conservation, 125 in visitor experience, 90 concerned with Te Anau township itself and about 100 related to transport issues” he said.

“These are now being coded and the results will be available later this month.”

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The Milford Opportunities Project was established in 2017 to create an ambitious and innovative masterplan for Milford Sound Piopiotahi, the Milford corridor and the region surrounding it.

Through engagement with stakeholders and the public a number of improvement suggestions had been identified.

These ideas were summarised into 13 key themes and further public feedback was sought on each theme via an open public online survey developed and circulated widely throughout New Zealand.

The first round of public consultation in June and July generated about 1000 responses.

These were evaluated and summarised and general comments then generated more ideas and suggestions.

Because of the area's national importance, the project team wanted further feedback on these idea proposals.

A page was created on the Milford Opportunities website encouraging the public to voice their opinions by Friday, 30 October.

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“We had a broad spectrum of feedback, but in the end we will not please all the people all the time. It’s a lot of work to fully evaluate that feedback and we’re having it professionally assessed by Visitor Solutions Ltd,” Mr Turner said.

The masterplan delivery is expected in March-April 2021. 

“COVID has imposed some additional time delays, but it’s important to do a high quality job that the government and the public can rely on,” Mr Turner said.

The governance group will have two more meetings this year and will be working on the draft masterplan, which they expect to deliver in February-March 2021.

At this point it’s not known whether the governance group will oversee the project implementation or dissolve once the masterplan is delivered. 

“The implementation will be a completely new exercise. Whether the group will continue into the next stage is up to the government to decide, but it would be nice to have some continuity,” Mr Turner said.

More information about the survey can be found on the Milford Opportunities website HERE.