When a territorial authority is making a plan for delivering water services, you need to know they have to follow some rules. They must make a decision to adopt the plan, and before they do, they have to talk to people about the ideas in the plan. This is because the plan is about how they will deliver water services, and they need to make sure people have a say in what the plan will look like, as required under section 13(1)(k) of the Preliminary Arrangements Act.

The territorial authority has to talk to people in a way that is set out in sections 27 to 33 of this Act, and they have to do it as if they were proposing a big change, which is called a change proposal, as defined in section 27(1).

Once they have talked to people and made their plan, the territorial authority does not have to do any more talking to people about the plan, under this Act or any other law.