Te Mahere Roa | Long Term Plan 2024-2034

Our Long Term Plan is our strategic document that guides what we want to achieve over the next 10 years and beyond, and how we’re going to pay for that mahi.

Like all councils around Aotearoa, we’re required to produce a new plan every three years. Council adopted the Long Term Plan 2024-2034 on 25 June 2024. We’ll also be making an annual plan, that covers just one year in detail, in 2025 and 2026.

We want a strong future for Te Taitokerau, with healthy wai, resilient communities in the climate crisis, and where whānau and whenua flourish. Our new plan provides new funding to help us work toward this, with significant new work particularly in our climate action, biosecurity, flood management, Te Tiriti Partnerships, and support services areas.

It also continues the collection of targeted rates to provide funding for emergency rescue services and sporting facilities, as a service to the community.

Rates will be increasing to support all of this work. In the first year of this plan, that means an increase of 15.94% or $81.20 per annual rates bill on average. This drops to 5.79% in the second year (2025/26) and 4.04% by the third year (2026/27).

More detail on rate increases can be found in the financial assumptions on page 124 of the final plan, linked below.

Our rates brochure has more detail on the rates we strike and what they pay for, or if you like details, you can read the rates section of the plan from page 73.

Strategic direction - nurture the environment, bring together the people.

Council prescribes user fees and charges to recover all or some of the costs associated with individuals using public resources. These fees are set under legislation, and are reviewed and updated annually.

We updated these through a process of review and consultation alongside the long term plan. You can read the final user fees and charges document here:

Our consultation period ran from 16 March – 19 April 2024. We asked what you thought about the work we were proposing for environmental management, community resilience and regional leadership, and also, whether we should continue funding for emergency rescue services and sporting facilities.

We asked whether we should fund the high priority work we need to do now, or just do the bare minimum.

We received a huge amount of interest in our consultation, and received almost 2,300 submissions, with a clear message to continue funding contributions to emergency services and also support for funding regional sporting facilities.

We also held a number of hui and information sessions throughout the feedback period, so people could talk to councillors and staff about our proposals.

Our Summary of feedback document (PDF 3.79 MB) outlines the feedback we received.

Read the consultation material here: