Treating parts of the PAUP decisions version as operative

​Section 86F of the Resource Management Act 1991 provides that if certain provisions (rules) in a proposed plan are beyond challenge they must be 'treated as operative', with any previous provisions (rules) in legacy plans to be treated as inoperative.

This occurs from the date that the appeal period expires if no appeals have been lodged against certain provisions, or from the date that appeals are either determined, withdrawn or dismissed.

The effect of treating provisions as operative under section 86F is to make the previous provisions (rules, and accompanying objectives and policies) in legacy plan(s) inoperative. The inoperative legacy provisions cease to have any legal or other operative planning relevance, so that (as a matter of law) resource consents are no longer required under those provisions.

The parts of any proposed plan that are subject to appeal cannot be made operative by the council until those appeals have been resolved.

For those parts that are subject to appeal the council is required to assess resource consent applications against parts of both the operative legacy district and regional plans and the PAUP decisions version.