Following the Global Financial Crisis, the Rotorua economic environment was in a ‘low’ to ‘no growth’ phase. Development contributions were perceived as a disincentive to growth in the Rotorua context and were scrapped in 2013. Over the last five years, due to a wide range of factors, Rotorua has become a destination city. This has led to exponential growth needs across the city.

With this demand for growth, the infrastructure to cater for this growth needs to be created. With all the growth in the region, Rotorua Lakes Council signaled the need for development contributions in their last two Long Term Plans and engaged Veros to help bring this to life.

Veros Project Manager, Haley Farmer, jumped on board to prepare and deliver a project plan from concept to fruition. Partnering with subject matter expert, Malcolm Thomas, Veros has managed the development of a draft policy, consultation, and approval of a final policy whilst managing risk, stakeholders, critical program dates, and quality from start to finish. Development Contributions Policy development is a technical and complex task that links back to the Council’s Long Term Plan and the Housing and Business Development Capacity Assessment.

For those unfamiliar, development contributions are charges set out in the Local Government Act, applied to new developments and rejuvenated brownfield developments, and can only be used to fund new growth-related infrastructure projects identified in Council’s Long Term Plan.

The project had a compressed timeframe kicking off late in 2021 and was signed off by Rotorua Lakes Council at the 25th August Council meeting. The policy will be implemented on the 1st of December 2022.

Currently, the cost of growth is absorbed by ratepayers in the district. Developing this policy for Council will levy the developer seeking support from the council to fund the expansion of water, sewerage and stormwater networks needed to support their development. The Development Contributions Policy will see the developer creating the need for growth infrastructure, paying a fair share of the capital cost of the new or expanded infrastructure required.

Haley said ‘Technically challenging projects such as this one benefit hugely from having a Project Manager engaged with a governance structure and project management methodologies applied. Whilst Veros is proud to deliver capital projects across New Zealand, they also have a team of strategic advisors and project managers that can add value to a range of more strategic and technical projects such as Development Contributions.”

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