ABSTRACT
This chapter makes a comparative analysis of the quality of policies and plans produced by regional and district councils. It considers population size as factor to serve as a proxy for resource availability of regional councils to build staff capability to prepare high quality plans. Several key findings are derived from the comparative analysis of plan quality. The differences in scores for criteria can be explained by differences in the functions of regional and district councils, and in the two types of planning instrument are regional policy statements and district plans. A priority would be to revise the Resource Management Act to include a vertical consistency requirement whereby district plans must be consistent with regional policy statements. The chapter theorizes that the planning mandate and implementing actions of central government organizations could directly and indirectly improve district council capability and district plans through improvements in regional council capability and regional policy statements.
