About our District Plans and FAQs

The District Plan affects the way you and your neighbours can use and develop property. For many people, the rules in the District Plan go unnoticed until they want to undertake a land-based activity or subdivide an area.

Examples of these activities are: 

• New dwellings and sheds, or extensions to existing ones;
• Earthworks or vegetation clearance; 
• New commercial or industrial activities, including accommodation for visitors; 
• New rural land uses; 
• Activities on the surface of rivers or lakes. 

In some cases, you may meet the requirements for a permitted activity and no resource consent will be required. In other cases, you will need to apply for a resource consent, which will set conditions that you must meet to go ahead with an activity.  In a few cases, your activity may not be able to go ahead at all, because the effects cannot be adequately managed, or the activity is not going to be compatible with surrounding activities.

Resource Management Act planning instruments intersect with other legislation and there are often other policies and rules that apply to a proposal. Some of these are: 

• National policy statements
• National environmental standards
• Waikato Regional Plan rules
• Bylaws
• Building controls

The District Plan controls some aspects of building works, for example, the size, scale and location of buildings and structures. Some building works are regulated under the Building Act 2004, and in some cases, you may need to apply for both a building consent under that legislation and/or a land use resource consent under the District Plan for the proposed activity. Applications for resource consent and building consent must be lodged separately because they are assessed under different legislation. Our Building Control Unit regulates building works under the Building Act 2004. 

For more information, see Building Consents.

1. See our list of helpful resources (above). 
2. For guidance on how our District Plans work, see:

3. Still stuck? Contact us via our Request for Service form. 

There are two ways that District Plans are changed: 

1. A central government direction or legislation change that requires Councils to implement changes to District Plans. 
2. Via a plan change - plan changes can be made by the Council or requested by private applicants. 

The Resource Management Act 1991 was amended in August by the Resource Management (Consenting and Other System Changes) Amendment Act 2025. As a result of these changes, councils are unable to progress a plan review or draft or proposed plan change unless certain criteria are met and/or an exemption is granted by the Minister for the Environment. This does not apply to private plan change requests. 

A request for a plan change must be made in writing to the Council. Applicants are welcome to arrange a pre-application meeting with Council staff to discuss the request. For information on the private plan change process, see advice from the Quality Planning website. 

For fees and charges for private plan changes, see here.