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Natural Environment Bill

Foundations - Environmental limits - Action plans and caps on resource use

64: Considerations before action plans can include controls on land use or inputs

You could also call this:

"Before making rules about land use, councils must think of other ways to protect the environment."

Illustration for Natural Environment Bill

If a regional council is making an action plan, you need to know what it's for. The plan might be to stop the environment from being harmed or to fix harm that's already been done. The council must think about other ways to achieve this before adding rules about how land can be used. The council must consider if national standards, existing rules, or special farm plans will work. They must also think about non-regulatory measures, which are ways to achieve something without making rules. If these measures won't work, the council can add rules about land use to the action plan. These rules are called controls on land use or inputs, which means restrictions on how land is used. This can include what can be built, what crops can be planted, or how much fertiliser can be used. The council will decide what these rules should be as part of the action plan.

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View the original legislation for this page at https://legislation.govt.nz/act/public/1986/0120/latest/link.aspx?id=LMS1537788.

This page was last updated on 14 December 2025 — View changes

Topics:

Environment and resources > ConservationEnvironment and resources > Town planningGovernment and voting > Local councilsHousing and property > Land use

63: General content of action plans, or

"What needs to be in a plan to protect the environment"

65: Requirements for action plans to remedy breach of environmental limits, or

"Fixing environmental breaches: councils must make a plan with achievable targets"

Part 2Foundations
Environmental limits: Action plans and caps on resource use

64Considerations before action plans can include controls on land use or inputs

This section applies if a regional council prepares an action plan for one of the following purposes:
to avoid breaching an environmental limit:
to remedy a breach of an environmental limit.

An action plan must not include controls on land use or inputs unless the regional council satisfied that the following measures will not be sufficient to achieve the purpose of the action plan:
national standards:
existing rules in a natural environment plan:
freshwater farm plans:
non-regulatory measures.

In this section, controls on land use or inputs means rules in a natural environment plan that restrict or determine how land is used and what it can be used for (for example the type of forestry planting, construction or use of urban or built areas, or fertiliser application rates).