Tēnā koutou katoa. He uri hau nō Peretānea. E tupu ake au e Kaihu e runga e te whenua o Roroa iwi.
Ko Tutumaui te mauna o e reo nei taku ngākou. Ko Kaihu te awa e mahia nei āku māharahara. E mihi anō ke nā tohu o nehe o te Roroa rohi.
E noho ana au ke Titahi Bay e runga e te whenua o Ngāti Toa Whangatira iwi. Ko Jackie Hagland tuku ingoa. Nō reira, tēnā koutou, tēnā koutou, tēnā koutou katoa.
Kia ora and thank you for dialling in to the webinar. I thought I'd start with a bit of an introduction. So my name is Jackie Hagland and I lead the policy and regulatory practise here at Allan & Clark.
Now I'm aware some of you may not know who Allan & Clark are. So a little bit about our whakapapa. So we've been around for over 20 years now.
Based here in Wellington, but we also have an office in Melbourne. Despite that, I know that some concern from local government is that people in Wellington don't know what's going out in the regions. But as part of my PBH, I acknowledge that I originally come from Northland, from the Kaipara district.
But I've also lived and worked in the Waikato and the Waitoho and also the Manawatu over the years. I've been with Allan & Clark for 11 and a half years. And my background previously was in education.
But one thing about consulting is we do a whole range of things. And that includes working with local government. Our experience with local government is both working directly with territorial authorities or regional councils.
But also actually quite often we work with central government and that interface between local and central government. Two projects that I personally have been involved in in that space was a review of the alcohol licencing cost recovery regulations last year. Which was a fantastic opportunity to talk to TAs about their experience with those regulations.
And also more recently we've done a stocktake of council practises related to resource management reform. Like I mentioned, my role here at Allan & Clark is leading the policy and regulatory practise. I also wear another hat in that I'm a shareholder in the organisation.
We also have two other arms. That is around evaluation and research work that we provide. And also business optimisation and programme delivery.
These webinars are part of our giving back. Through the work that we do, we learn a lot about actually what are the difficulties and concerns that are facing different organisation types. And that includes with local government.
So what we're looking to do with these webinars is to bring together our community. To share ideas, to share what we've learned. And hopefully also to help organisations understand really that they're not on their own.
And share some of what we've seen work well. This is our first local government webinar. And today we're going to focus on bylaws.
And so I will now hand over to my colleagues Wayne and Stuart to introduce themselves. Wayne. Thanks Jackie.
Hi, I'm Wayne Murphy. And I've been with Allan & Clark for just over a year. And prior to coming to the firm, I worked a number of different central government agencies.
And before moving to Wellington from Oamaru, which is my home, I spent about 17 years in the local government sector. I spent quite a lot of time working at the Waitaki District Council. And in that time, worked on a lot of different council policy areas.
Bylaws was part of that. I also did a bit of work in leading the Wellington City Council's bylaw review programme when I was with them. Stuart.
Kia ora koutou, my name is Stuart Beresford. And I've been at Allan & Clark for the last eight years. I came from Allan & Clark from central government.
I worked at the Ministry of Justice previously. During my time here at Allan & Clark, I've worked directly with local government on a few projects. I don't have the practical experience that Wayne has of working with local government.
But I understand the needs of local government and through the work that we've done for them. One of the projects that I was involved on was reviewing the Far North District Council's policy and bylaws around relating to public places. And more recently, I've worked with the Queenstown Lakes District Council on their freedom camping strategy.
Sometimes though, the projects that we are working on, while they might be for central government agencies, they do touch on local government. Yesterday I was in Hokitika working for MBIE on the issue around for tourism and workforce issues. And while down in Hokitika, we met up with and spoke to one of the local government representatives about some of the problems that they were facing with the tourism workforce in the area.
So today we're going to discuss the issue of bylaws. And in particular, we'll start off with by just discussing why we have a bylaw. Wayne? Well, there can be a number of reasons why a council is looking at bylaws.
One can be that they're reviewing something, so they've already got a bylaw on their books and it's time to review it. Other times, they're a well-known intervention tool, so people automatically think if there's a problem, perhaps a bylaw might be a way of fixing it. There can be statutorily driven imperatives behind making a bylaw, and we'll touch on that shortly.
And then there is just a way to, it can be just a really useful enforcement tool for councils when managing a particular problem. And it'd be fair to say, Wayne, that a number of the issues that councils face when they are developing a bylaw, a number of the processes, a number of the procedures that they follow would be applicable to the other work of the council, such as the development of strategies, such as the development of their long-term plans. That's right.
So bylaws, when you're making a bylaw, one of the process steps that you have to do is follow the special consultative procedure. That's the same for the long-term plan and other significant council policies. I go back to a time when I was first working on bylaws when a special order process needed to be followed.
So the special consultative procedure is actually a lot more user friendly in that regard. So we talk about why we have a bylaw. You know, it's fair to say that they are a core function of local government.
When local governments come to thinking about, well, look, why should we have them? I know that with the work that we did with the Far North District Council, that a lot of the bylaws that they did were legislatively driven. But what are some of the other reasons as to why councils may have a bylaw? Well, the bylaw activity or the bylaw policy area of local government is cyclical in nature. So when council will have a number of bylaws on their books, they are required to review them periodically.
In the case of existing bylaws, they need to be reviewed every 10 years to remain active. For new bylaws, you review them five years after initially being made. But what's behind that? There can be a number of different reasons or issues behind the need for a bylaw.
The typical ones are managing nuisances, such as bees and poultry in an urban area. It can be a really useful tool for protecting and promoting public health and safety. An example of that might be smoking.
I had to do a bylaw on that. Minimising potential for offensive behaviour in public places. An example of that would be liquor bans and controlling the liquor.
And there are other policies that surround that as well. So that's a really good example of a multifaceted response to a particular problem. Then there's promoting or protecting public infrastructure.
That's typically water services, wastewater and the like. And another typical area that comes up in the bylaw space is regulating activities in public places and land controlled by the council. One of the things there is that crossover or convergence of bylaws and national regulations.
For example, you talked about no local alcohol bans. And the crossover between regulations around alcohol licencing and that sort of thing. Bylaws in that situation can be used to increase the role or the protections.
And making sure that they are actually targeted and specific for the needs of those individual communities. And what the desires are in that space. And that's one of the benefits and the really nifty thing about bylaws is they are a targeted instrument.
The local council is in a really good position to know what the local problems are and develop a targeted response to that. One of the things that we, when we did the work for the Far North District Council, we looked at the public places bylaws and policies across all 67 territorial authorities in New Zealand. And one of the things that struck me was, Wayne, that for some areas, and freedom camping I'll use as the example.
Some councils chose to have a bylaw. Some councils chose to have a policy. And some councils chose to do nothing.
Why did councils make that choice between whether to have a bylaw or whether to create a policy around an issue? I guess, staying with that example, it would probably come down to whether they needed to have some sort of enforcement backstop. So in the case of a bylaw, if you've got a bylaw breach, then you can look at some kind of enforcement to deal with the issue and to change behaviours. Or to ensure that the issue that you're trying to manage actually is able to be controlled.
A policy is probably an interim step to that. And in some cases, I would say many cases, it's good to establish what the policy issue is, before you then look to the regulatory instrument that you want to have alongside that. An example of that, another example of that would be park and control.
So we understand what the council is looking to achieve with its park and control. I know of one particular council where this has been discussed lately on the back of issues about replacing their parking metres, for example. And so, you know, I was looking at that with some interest because it seemed to me that the policy wasn't really the focus of the conversation.
It was more about the asset. And I found that a bit odd from a policy point of view. So, rather like the development of regulations for central government, the first step is to look at what the problem definition is.
Yes. And then once you've actually worked it out, then you might find it in terms of exploring your problem and definition, there are a number of other issues that need to be considered as part of that. Because along with the problem definition, and you're thinking about possible responses to that, there is another issue about creating a new problem when you come up with a solution.
It's the typical policy dilemma. You come up with a bespoke solution, but it also can create another issue. And along with the problem definition, you will then be able to look at a range of possible response options.
And as we just touched on, council policy is certainly one stopping off point there. You might look at a non-regulatory response. Yes, so that would be like education, like signage.
So, as you talk about the kind of like a soft approach to trying to deal with the problem, to deal with the nuisance. That's right. If we use your camping example, it's responsible for moving into creating a bylaw.
Erecting some signs might have the desired effect. And then if it doesn't, then you know, well, that hasn't really worked. Let's look at what other options there are.
So it'd be fair to say that just because a council can make a bylaw, doesn't mean that it should make a bylaw. That's right. There are a number of factors to consider if you're going down that route, and we'll touch on that shortly.
But obviously, when you make a bylaw, there's a time and an investment approach to that. And we can talk about some good processes that go alongside that. And then you've got to look at, once you've made the bylaw, how you're going to make it work.
What sort of enforcement and monitoring and those sorts of controlled measures. Because it's all well and good creating the bylaw, but the issue doesn't go away once you've made the bylaw. You've then got to look at the enforcement.
I was going to say, and that's where the consultation part really does come in, doesn't it? Around actually making sure, or talking with your community and identifying to what extent this bylaw or what you're proposing is actually going to address the issues. That's right. And I mentioned before about the special consultative procedure.
That's a statutory requirement in terms of making a bylaw. But council actually has the ability to go way beyond that in terms of engaging with its community and looking at what the problem is. And also having discussions around possible response options.
I find that approach works really well because it raises community awareness. It builds capability within the community and also it enables different community groups that might have different views to actually discuss the issue to come up with a consensus before you then start going through the formal council process. Raising the awareness is a really important part actually because then it helps with the implementation.
If people have awareness of the issue as well as it's been developed, because then they're like, OK, cool. We can understand now why this bylaw or why this policy has been put in place because the council have shared with us what the problem that they were facing is. That's right.
One of the things I've found really good in the past is that when you're even just still at the problem definition stage, if you've got a diverse group of stakeholders sitting around the table discussing the issue, you start to build a consensus around understanding the problem. And that way you've got a group of people that might not have been able to appreciate another person or another organisation's perspective able to engage with them. And then from that, you start building a pathway to more enduring solutions.
I know we worked on a bylaw for another local council just around COVID time. And what they thought was the problem wasn't actually the issue. Once we spoke to and we reached out to the communities that were affected, there was an underlying matter that was actually driving the behaviour and it was that matter that needed the focus.
And so it was another bylaw that needed a tweak that would then deal with that behaviour so that the first bylaw really, the one that they had actually asked us to work on, it needed updating but it didn't need the change that they had initially thought it did. I suppose in talking about that too, that's the whole thing about kind of coming into the process with a bit of an open mind and recognising that actually through that consultation or through the research, you might actually identify that what you thought was the problem actually isn't the problem and having an ability and an openness to potentially changing tack if that's actually what's required. And also just talking to other councils, the neighbouring councils around because many of the issues that they are facing are similar.
And so it may be vehicles on beaches, it may be freedom camping, it may be livestock or other animals in urban spaces. And that the approach that those neighbouring councils are taking may be applicable to your approach. And it's also quite good to have consistency between councils because people are moving from one area to the other.
And I think that it is quite good to have a level of consistency, taking into account the unique needs of each region, but that there is not a quite significant difference in approach between territories. And I think that that is also what struck us when we did the public places work and going back to freedom camping, that people were travelling from one area to the other and the rules changed basically every couple of kilometres. And I think that it just created confusion for those people that were wanting to behave appropriately, but just needed the right guidance around how to do that.
One of the things I've actually been really impressed with when we've been doing our work for central government engaging with local government is actually identifying that there are quite often some of the smaller councils really do work quite closely with their neighbours. And I think that's a fantastic approach and it sort of helps more regional responses to problems rather than the individual councils and does make it a lot easier for people that live in those areas. I mean, Ryan, you spent quite a bit of time working for the Waitaki District Council.
Is that something that you observed? Of course. Yeah, staying in that space, the Waitaki Lakes, the three councils around the Waitaki Lakes work quite closely together in terms of managing those areas. So you've got McKenzie, Waimazi and Waitaki.
And as you say, if you're in that area, the district council's boundaries aren't particularly important. It's just as you say, it's nice that the rules are consistent. There's another element that we haven't quite discussed, and that is the issue around timing.
You mentioned, Wayne, that councils are required to review bylaws every 10 years unless they're new, in which case then it's five. But because they're on that 10-year cycle, councils will be on a different time period when it comes to particular bylaws. Do you think it would be beneficial for councils to perhaps to reach out to their neighbours and to encourage them if they're changing their bylaw around freedom camping, as an example, that the councils in the other areas that have similar bylaws also modernise and update their bylaws at the same time? Yeah, there's certainly a lot of opportunity for efficiencies in doing that.
I think back to my time when I was at MPI and I was doing some work in the pest biosecurity area there and looking at regional pest management plans. We developed our Forward Work Programme based on what we knew was coming up. I think the same works in the bylaw space.
There's a 10-year cycle ongoing. It's not very hard for councils to look at their neighbours and just check on the timing of when bylaws are coming up for review and ask themselves, can we work more closely together? It's really quite handy from a community engagement and consultation point of view if, for example, Wellington and Hutt City are talking about the same issues because people move between the two territorial authorities every day. Did you have any experience from your time in council around the resourcing for enforcement? Yes, I worked in a fairly small organisation before I moved to Wellington, so it was pretty easy to discuss these issues with colleagues in the organisation.
The budget side of things is part of the core approach with regard to giving advice back to council. Towards the end of the process, you'd probably look at, right, we've gone through the process, we've had feedback, let's make this bylaw. And in the course of doing that, there are going to be funding implications that go along with that.
The organisation will probably already have some capability and capacity around that. Talking about monitoring before, Jackie, you'd probably consider whether the resourcing that the organisation is currently devoted is sufficient or whether it needs to be tweaked. And along with that, you may also need to think about, beyond the resourcing staff and putting signs up and those sorts of things, some councils might need to put some money aside for prosecutions.
There's a number of different issues in terms of that side of things with regard to resourcing. As I said before, the set-it-and-forget-it approach is, I think, a little bit short-sighted. I'd be surprised if council officers weren't taking that into account when they're coming to the end of their bylaw making process.
And I think one of the things related to that, to be honest, is we have a very mobile workforce and people move between roles. And so making sure that those that have a role in enforcing or monitoring, that they've got good notes around actually what the processes are so that someone new to the role is actually able to pick it up and roll on. Because we definitely see examples of where something was done fantastic, but then someone's moved on and it slipped through the cracks.
And that can put an organisation at risk because suddenly a ball's been dropped somewhere and actually the problem's no longer being addressed. The other thing around the monitoring and enforcement side of things, past making the bylaw, is when council is doing its annual planning process or long-term plan approach. That's another point in time where council can review the adequacy of its resourcing for that side of things.
And I think councils need to be aware of that the review of the bylaw takes time. I mean, it's not something that can be done over a short period of two, three month period. It actually takes time to really, you know, and you're right, you need to be constantly monitoring and constantly gathering data.
But that review process does mean, you know, by the time you talk to the public, by the time you go through, and you should go through as part of the review, you know, your policy, your problem definition approach, you should start from the beginning. You know, does the problem that we first identified 20 years ago, does it still exist? Does it, do we, you know, and then, you know, what is the, you know, does that nuisance that we were aware of because of, you know, having, you know, bees in urban areas, is that still something that we are, you know, having to actually, you know, create a bylaw for? And I do think that it is really important that, you know, councils do appreciate that that takes time. And so, and especially when they have a big suite of bylaws, and even if they have a consolidated approach, that does mean that the council needs to have the resource to do that work.
It's a really good point that actually, you know, the monitoring and enforcement and having the evidence that actually the problem continues to be. And that's one of the things that, you know, we found in some of the work that we've done for central government looking into local government is that some councils do struggle to actually have good data on what their day-to-day activities are. And it doesn't have to be super complex, it can be quite simple, but having a system in place to actually make sure that you're keeping track of the monitoring and the enforcement action or whatever else that might be related to those individual bylaws.
So you've got that evidence when it comes to that review time, don't you? Yeah. And staying with that, you might need to cast the net a little bit wider. So, for example, if we look at the liquor control, the liquor band type instrument, if the police are helping enforce that, it makes a lot of sense to check with the police as to whether, you know, whether there's been an improvement or whether, in fact, it's working as it should.
And whether there's any issues outside of the area that's been controlled that's come to light. So I'm a big fan of looking at bylaws at each stage and looking quite broadly at who to be involved in that in order to have the best result. When we're looking at the policies and the bylaws across the country, was that some councils have consolidated bylaws and other councils have, you know, individual bylaws for each or bylaws for each individual issue.
Do you think that there's, you know, is there benefits? What are the benefits for each approach? Personally, I'm more of a fan of just having bespoke bylaws to deal with particular issues. People relate to the issue. If they see the bylaw heading, it makes it easy to understand what the issue is and what the council, and take it from there.
But councils will have worked out what's best for them. When I was with Wellington City Council, they had a consolidated bylaw and they worked through the chapters in a progressive way. And I think a lot of it comes down to working with what you've got and just making sure that it meets the need.
It's really important to look at what, once again, comes back to what are the problems. When you're doing your bylaw review programme, it makes a lot of sense to me to ask yourself, did the problem that existed when the bylaw was initially made, is it still an issue now? As you said before, Jackie, about looking at these things with a fresh and open mind is really important. And just rolling over a bylaw because it was something that the organisations had for a long time.
The Local Government Act gave councils space to consider that quite carefully and not just leave the bylaw on the books and expect people to know about it. It is actually now something for councils to be more proactive about. And so when you say proactive, does that mean that you shouldn't wait till the 10 year review period to actually look at the bylaw, that you should be keeping it under, evaluating it regularly? Well, in my view, when the time comes to either review the policy, as we were talking about before, and assuming that you've got that kind of architecture in place of a policy supported by a bylaw, then at some point when you're doing that, you'll want to be reviewing it on the basis of good evidence about how the problem is being managed or the problem that was originally believed to exist, and to know whether the bylaw is effective.
And if behaviours have changed or you don't have that evidence, you end up in the position of not being on such solid ground with regard to your policy or your bylaw. You made mention of consultation, so we did actually get a question in. So one of them is around what are currently the channels that reach communities? And actually this is one thing, consultation with communities is something that we do a lot of, both for when we are working with TAs around specific issues, but also actually when we're working with all kinds of organisations.
So what are some of the tips and tricks that we've learnt through our work around how to actually engage communities? Because something that's really meaningful and we're like, this is a real concern, but actually sometimes it's just really hard to get busy people to engage with consultation processes. Yeah, I'd agree with that. And I've seen a couple of examples of that.
So coming back to something I said before, if you've got a group of stakeholders like on a working party situation, they'll have their own networks as well. So that's a really, really good way of raising awareness outside of the council. And I think a lot of people would be pretty used to looking for information on the council's website.
So that's kind of a given. I think using other media also is still appropriate in terms of raising awareness. And I've seen just in the last 24, 48 hours, for example, I received a message from the AA concerning changes to proposed speed limits in Wellington.
So that's a really good example of they've used their membership to raise awareness of something. And I'm sure the council had advertised it, but until I got that email, I wasn't aware of it. So there's a lot to be said for looking at using other networks for raising awareness of these things.
And I think it's important there, like with regard to any consultation, whether it is central government or local government, is firstly, you need to identify what are the groups that you need to be consulting with. And if those groups are, you know, there may be vulnerable communities. And you need using intermediaries to reach out to those communities is actually really important.
So I think that you need to, when you're developing your stakeholder engagement, you need to go, you know, identify what is the problem that you're going to be asking, you're going to be exploring, and then go through and sort of like write down the various groups that you want to reach out to. They may be Maori, they may be Pasifika, they may be, you know, fishermen, they may be, you know, beekeepers and tourists, and then try and bring them in. And then don't forget also that, you know, often, you know, you want to get a spread of views, you don't want to just focus on, you know, you know, middle aged, you know, people who own their own home, you want to also look at young people, you want to look at, you know, you know, young people, you want to look at, you know, young people, you want to look at, you know, young people, you want to look at, you know, young people, you want to look at, you know, young people, you want to look at, you know, young people, you want to look at, you know, young people, you want to look at, you know, young people, you want to look at, you know, young people, you want to look at you know, those who, you know, you know, retired in other communities.
I think, you know, I think, just listen to what we've been saying here. I think one of the clear things is around public consultation, it's not a case of invite them and they will come. You really do need to reach out.
And so if you're going to get really good engagement, essentially, you have to take yourself to where, you know, it's those who engagement have to take take yourself to where the people already are, where the, you know, if you've identified, actually, we really want to hear from this group, then reach out to them directly. And if you can offer to go to visit them, that's really key. And I think that that's important, whether or not it's a really defined, confined space like the Wellington City Council, or whether it's a much wider area like Queenstown Lakes, or the Far North District Council, Southland, that you actually do go out to your communities, wherever they may be, and talk to them.
Yeah, because you really will reap the benefit of that work. It is more work, and we do recognise it takes more time. But actually, the quality of the information that you'll get will really help both with actually identifying is this bylaw actually what we need to do, but also thinking about implementation monitoring.
And, you know, we talked about having if you're engaging with people during the process of developing the bylaw, then there's going to be better understanding of why it's been introduced. Better buy-in. Yeah, much better buy-in, yeah.
And yeah, so thank you very much for your time. And thanks, Wayne and Stuart, for sharing your experience, and we hope you found this helpful.
