Boffa Miskell’s Submission on the Natural Environment Bill and the Planning Bill

Our submission supports the overall intent of the reforms and seeks targeted improvements to ensure the new system is workable, integrated, and capable of delivering high-quality environmental and development outcomes.

Several changes proposed in the Natural Environment Bill and the Planning Bill have the potential to limit the ability to deliver high-quality environments, support cultural outcomes, and maintain the integrated planning, landscape, ecological and design considerations central to our practice. Our feedback focuses on ensuring the reforms achieve their purpose while providing clarity and certainty for councils, developers, infrastructure providers, iwi partners and communities.

Our submission also complements and supports the positions of the professional institutes our team members belong to, including NZILA, NZPI and EIANZ, which have raised similar concerns regarding landscape recognition, spatial planning requirements, and environmental outcomes.

Lack of recognition for ‘everyday landscapes’ in the Goals provisions in both Bills.

While outstanding landscapes and natural features and areas of high natural character are specifically mentioned, the Bills do not recognise the importance of everyday landscapes that shape the lived experience of communities and contribute to environmental quality and identity.

Our submission requests explicit recognition of everyday landscapes and their enhancement in the goals of both Bills to ensure place-shaping and community wellbeing remain core system outcomes.

Insufficient definition of “well-functioning” in the Planning Bill

The Planning Bill requires the creation of “well-functioning urban and rural areas” but provides no definition or criteria. This creates a risk of ‘well-functioning’ being interpreted solely as ‘development capacity’, which could omit essential qualities such as sense of place, natural systems, resilience and character.

Our submission requests inclusion of a clear, multi-scale definition of “well-functioning”, including criteria for natural systems, resilience, character, and coastal environments to support high-quality development outcomes and provide consistent national direction.

Fragmentation between the two Bills

Place-based outcomes such as natural character and environmental values are not consistently integrated across both Bills. This risks misalignment between spatial planning, natural environment planning, land-use planning, and consenting.

Our submission requests amendments to integrate and align goals across both Bills so environmental and place-based outcomes are consistently carried through all planning instruments and processes.

No explicit direction for Environmental Enhancement

The Natural Environment Bill focuses on “limits” but does not require or support enhancement of natural character or biodiversity. Without this, environmental management becomes reactive rather than restorative.

Our submission requests that goals for environmental enhancement, including restoring biodiversity and natural character over time, be incorporated to enable a proactive, outcomes-focused approach aligned with best-practice environmental management.

Reduced recognition of Māori Interests

Retaining the essential content of Sections 6, 7 and 8 of the Resource Management Act (1991) is not part of the proposed reforms. We are concerned that this omission may reduce the consistent recognition of Māori values, cultural relationships, and mātauranga Māori in planning and decision-making.

We requested amendment(s) to reflect rights, obligations, and values of Māori consistent with RMA sections 6, 7 and 8, and ensure that iwi/hapū input is meaningfully integrated throughout the system.

Planning Bill Clause 14 (Effects to be Disregarded)

Clause 14 requires decision-makers to disregard several effects we consider to be central to environmental quality and liveability; including landscape effects, amenity, building layout and provision of outdoor space, and views from private property. Our submission identified specific problems:

• Decline in Everyday Environmental Quality: Ignoring landscape and amenity considerations could lead to long-term degradation of neighbourhood character and wellbeing.
• Weakening Ability to Manage Cumulative Effects: Even if many small changes collectively degrade an area, councils would be prevented from addressing them if the individual effect categories are out of scope.
• Poor-quality Development Outcomes: As currently drafted, the Planning Bill could allow large-scale built-form changes - such as major commercial or mixed-use developments in visually prominent locations - to proceed without any assessment of their effects on landscape character, local identity, outlook or neighbourhood quality.

Boffa Miskell’s primary request is full deletion of Clause 14.

If retained, we requested that Clause 14 be amended to ensure it does not restrict:

• Assessment of public realm and outdoor space quality
• Consideration of character and context
• Evaluation of landscape and amenity effects in everyday environments

Issues with Regional Spatial Plan Provisions

Our submission fully supports spatial planning as a foundation for integrated decision-making. However, we identified key deficiencies in the Planning Bill’s requirements for regional spatial plans.

• Missing Requirements for Place and Character Descriptions: Spatial plans are not required to describe the distinctive qualities that shape place and character. We are concerned that spatial plans could become overly infrastructure-driven at the expense of local identity and community values.
• Lack of Blue-Green Network Integration: The Planning Bill currently does not require identification of streams, wetlands, ecological corridors, coastal interfaces or other natural systems that underpin resilience and environmental quality.
• No Minimum Standards for Mapping and Data Quality: spatial plans rely heavily on technical mapping, but the Bill does not require minimum standards for accuracy, transparency, or currency. This poses particular challenges given the compressed six-month timeframe for plan approval.

Our submission requests the following amendments to the Planning Bill:

• Require spatial plans to include place and character descriptions, and identification of place-shaping elements
• Require identification and integration of blue-green systems at regional, local, and finer scales.
• Establish minimum mapping and data standards to ensure that data is current, transparent, technically robust, and publicly accessible.
• Strengthen national direction by setting minimum expectations for characterisation, landscape evaluation, and mapping standards in spatial plans.

Boffa Miskell’s submission on the Natural Environment Bill and the Planning Bill supports the overall intent of the reforms, particularly clearer national direction and integrated spatial planning. The issues identified and amendments requested aim to ensure the new planning system is capable of delivering high-quality environments that support resilient communities, protect natural systems, reflect cultural values, and enable enduring, well-designed development across Aotearoa.