Tēnā koutou katoa, and welcome to our 2025-26 Annual Plan and 2024-34 Long-term Plan amendment consultation space.

Council signed off the Annual Plan on 24 June 2025. You can view the full agenda for the meeting, and watch a replace of the livestream of that meeting, here.

Council worked hard to strike a balance between two things: doing what we must to ensure our region is a healthy environment where people thrive, and keeping rates as affordable as possible. This balancing act is difficult in the face of rising costs, increasing and competing demands from our community, an ever-changing legislative landscape, and the fact we have one primary tool (rates) to raise revenue. These challenges and considerations where in the minds of councillors when finalising the 2025-26 Annual Plan and the average rates increase of 8.8%.

The 8.8% increase is lower than initial forecasts. Horizons' 2024-34 Long-term Plan indicated the increase would be 12%. Council consulted on an 11.3% increase, and brought it down to the final figure of 8.8%. They did that by adjusting plans for the upcoming year, delaying bringing on new staff, using reserves were possible, and making efficiencies with insurance costs. At the same time, they stuck to the Long-term Plan and retained additional funding for biodiversity and biosecurity, river management and drainage scheme maintenance, and public transport.

The 8.8% increase can be broken down like so:

• 1.6% for targeted public transport rates.
• 2.2% for biosecurity and biodiversity (0.9% of that is targeted).
• 1.3% for targeted increased river management and drainage scheme maintenance.
• 3.8% for increased ‘business as usual’ costs.

Council consulted on also amending the Long-term Plan. This amendment would have enabled the investigation into selling Horizons' shareholding in CentrePort, the sale of those shares, and reinvestment of the proceeds into a managed fund.

Council decided to continue investigations, but to not proceed straight away with a sale if those investigations came back showing the sale would produce favourable outcomes for ratepayers. This does not mean a sale will not happen, but does mean Council would have to consult again with the community if it wanted to proceed with a sale.

You can learn more about this process by reading the subpages linked towards the bottom of the page, or by reading the Consultation Document available on this page.

Every three years we produce a Long-term Plan (LTP), which sets out the services and projects we will deliver for the next decade and how we will pay for them.

During the years in between, we must produce an Annual Plan (AP). The AP sets out the planned projects and services for the upcoming financial year - in this case, 1 July 2025 to 30 June 2026.

Since we created the LTP in 2024 to run until 2034, we would usually only be considering an AP this year. However, since we have a significant issue we are legally required to consult on - the possible sale of our CentrePort shareholding - we must consult on amending our current LTP.

You can learn more about our current LTP by clicking/tapping here.