Nick Smith

Environment Minister Nick Smith and Local Government Minister Rodney Hide today announced the members of the review team that will investigate Environment Canterbury's poor performance.

"Last month we announced that the Government was not satisfied with Environment Canterbury's performance and that an external review was necessary to fix the Council's problems," Dr Smith and Mr Hide said.

"The areas of concern are the processing of resource consents on time, developing a proper framework for managing Canterbury's natural resources, and the management of relationships with Canterbury's territorial local authorities.

"The first component of the review is under Section 24A of the Resource Management Act, looking into Environment Canterbury's resource management functions. The second is a non-statutory assessment of Environment Canterbury's governance and policy functions under the Local Government Act."

Dr Smith said former Deputy Prime Minister Wyatt Creech would oversee the RMA investigation working with Doug Martin of MartinJenkins and Associates and independent consultant Greg Hill.

Mr Hide said the review of Environment Canterbury's governance, policy functions and relationships with other councils would be done by civil engineer Doug Lowe, consultant Julie Clausen and economist Alison Dalziel.

Both reviews start at Environment Canterbury today and are due to be completed by Friday 4 December. The report is due with the Ministers in January 2010. "These appointments and the review timetable have been discussed with Environment Canterbury," the Ministers said.