Southland District Council (SDC) Chief Executive Cameron McIntosh has admitted they got it wrong, following the release of an independent review into the 2022 SDC v Te Anau Downs Station Environment Court case.

In 2022 the SDC sought a ruling in the Environment Court to prevent the further clearing of indigenous vegetation on Te Anau Downs Station.

However landowner Peter Chartres maintained he had done nothing wrong.

The Environment Court subsequently ruled in Chartres' favour and ordered the SDC to pay costs of $300,000.

Chartres said after the ruling that he remained deeply disappointed in the heavy-handed approach taken by the council throughout this process and hoped the case would result in some internal review of practices and processes.

An independent review, to better understand the circumstances leading to the court decision, was initated by the SDC and carried out by enviromental consultant John Hutching and resource management lawyer Ian Gordon.

The review highlighted key issues and produced 12 recommendations, but concluded that “…there was no single action, fault or omission that caused the result. Rather a decade long concert of factors aligned in a way that was difficult to foresee, difficult to avoid and difficult to navigate”.

It further noted that while performance was not always optimal, no single individual can be held to be most responsible and that there was nothing to suggest staff had an ‘‘over-zealous or idealistic approach’’.

The 12 recommendations are:

1. Prepare an enhanced Council compliance monitoring and enforcement manual.
2. Develop a protocol for the making of a deliberate decision to implement a mid-stream peer review of Council long running and complex legal proceedings, such as those arising in the TADS case.
3. Improve the efficiency of the way the Council manages the LGOIMA process.
4. Ensure future delegation powers and procedures remain robust.
5. Ensure there are clear lines-of-sight / overview / ‘escalation upwards’ opportunities for the decision-making path on such matters as those that arose at TADS and that full discussion of such matters occurs at meetings of the Executive Leadership Team.
6. With the passing of the Natural and Built Environment Act, and the proposed formation of regional committees, consider the merit of negotiating with other Southland local authorities to enable the application of a regional approach to the implementation of compliance monitoring and enforcement actions, in relation to biodiversity.
7. Provide better information to landowners, so they may more clearly understand those land use activities enabled or not enabled within the District Plan.
8. Increase the budget for Council’s compliance monitoring and enforcement function, increase the number of experienced personnel operating in this area and consider options to enhance the Council’s capacity and capability to implement RMA requirements.
9. Introduce better document management systems to enable more efficient preparation and review of proceedings such as those related to TADS.
10. Establish a panel of legal advisors to readily enable external review processes and to ensure specialist legal work is undertaken by those best equipped to do it, with the added benefit of avoidance of potential conflicts of interest.
11. Work with Environment Southland on a program to promote on-farm indigenous revegetation, including ‘the right plants and trees in the right place,’ and to lobby central government to include small indigenous woodlots, wetlands, riparian planting and emerging SNAs in the ETS scheme.
12. Urgently review the biodiversity aspects of the operative Southland District Plan, to: a) Identify how it can give effect to the NPS for Indigenous Biodiversity 202314, including whether further work should be undertaken to identify and provide for Significant Natural Areas (SNAs); b) Clarify the relationship between existing uses, permitted activities and the definitions applying to these, with a focus on how these may affect the clearance of indigenous vegetation.

In accepting the findings today (15 Nov) SDC Mayor Rob Scott said the review made it clear what needed to be done and that the council had a big job ahead of it.

"We need to do better for our community and we’re determined to make the necessary changes."

"We are taking the review’s findings very seriously."

"Staff have been tasked with preparing a plan to deliver on all 12 recommendations and Council will be monitoring progress to ensure our regulatory and planning services meet the needs of the community."

"I’m confident the team we have in place can do what’s necessary," Scott said.

“A top priority is a review of key sections of our District Plan."

"This is a significant and important job that will take some time to complete and is critical to our approach to compliance with the Resource Management Act."

"We know we are not the only council around the country dealing with these issues and we’ll seek to involve others in the process,” Scott said.

SDC chief executive Cameron McIntosh accepted the council should have done better in its approach to the Environment Court proceedings. 

“We got it wrong and we know the local community is disappointed in the process."

"We also know there’s a lot of work ahead and we’ll need resourcing to bring our regulatory services up to par."

"This won’t happen overnight, but we know the areas we need to prioritise and we’re putting in place a detailed plan to deliver for our community."

“The fact the court proceedings ended the way they did indicates that we are significantly under-resourced in this area."

"It’s not simply a case of people ‘doing a better job’, it’s about having the right resource, sufficient experience, good processes and strong leadership in place."

"Creating the implementation plan and resource, our response is an investment in our community and in meeting the expectations of our residents,” McIntosh said.

CLICK HERE to read the full independent report.