A large part of the Tasman District is zoned rural, not including public conservation land managed by Department of Conservation. Our rural environment is part of what makes our District special and it’s a working environment – part of our collective livelihood. We produce food, fibre, and timber products that are used locally, nationally, and internationally.

There are many pressures and interests. We know from conversations with our communities that it is important for our rural areas to keep looking and feeling rural as they grow. We must plan carefully to allow for rural lifestyles and livelihoods, but we must also protect productive land, freshwater, air quality, significant natural areas, and other environmental and cultural values.

We need to ask: how do we want our rural areas to look, feel, produce, and sound? We need to have sensible policies and rules to protect and shape our rural environment.

Iwi and Council are working on ways to support and encourage papakāinga living in both our rural and urban areas to give our Māori communities a range of living options.

The 'Rural Review'

The recent Rural Review (Plan Change 60) was completed in 2016 and improved many of the policies and rules. For example, following the Rural Review, the plan is now supportive of second dwellings on current lots.

All of Tasman’s land is categorised into zones. These zones are often broad areas that all have the same policies and rules in order to achieve certain outcomes. For example, rural zones have very different rules to residential zones.

The current plan has a Rural 1 Zone and a Rural 2 Zone. In the new Plan we will need to change these names to reflect the new national planning standards meaning they will change to “Rural Production Zone” and the “General Rural Zone”. We also have many small properties in clusters that should be rezoned as “Residential”. We’ll be commencing all of this mapping work in 2023.