Voting closed on 11th October. The Bell Block Spatial Plan – and a Citizen’s Panel - have been on our radar since then.
Voting closed on 11th October. The Bell Block Spatial Plan – and a Citizen’s Panel - have been on our radar since then.
Over the last council term sometimes we weren’t sure how much the Councillors actually knew about what would happen after they voted on a decision. We weren’t sure if they saw as little detail as we did before they voted.
We would do OIA’s to find detail was either not made available to us, and we had to push for it, or it could be light on detail regarding numbers and facts.
The community has voted for a lot of new people this year, and we know a little bit about this group of people as we were quite heavily involved with events and their campaigns through the election process.
We have been watching closely what the elected officials know about and what the staff make happen.
The Bell Block Community Board, and NPDC Bell Block Spatial Plan Project Team, set up a meeting the weekend after the election to get on with the Bell Block Spatial Plan. The newly elected officials had not yet been sworn in.
On 19th October there was a second meeting with Iwi and Hapu to go through their aspirations for the future of Bell Block. Whoever arranged the meeting forgot to make sure the incumbent Council representative – Murray Chong – was reminded of the meeting. The meeting went ahead without the oversight of the NPDC’s still elected official.
Since this meeting EJ Barrett has been appointed as the Council Representative to support the Bell Block Community Board, replacing Murray Chong.
We did an OIA for information about the meeting on the 19th and we also asked for a copy of the overall Engagement Plan – how all of the Community will get to engage with their own “aspirations”.
The NPDC declined to answer the questions in this OIA. We did get sent a copy of a map of Bell Block – just a map – nothing significant on it. This would be funny – but time answering OIA’s costs the people of New Plymouth a lot of money.
In the meantime, the NPDC Project Team and Community Board are now asking for 25 people to form a “Citizens Panel” in Bell Block – to be the people who represent the “aspirations” for the rest of the Bell Block community, and the rest of the New Plymouth District. Flyers went in to letterboxes in Bell Block last week and a Have Your Say item has been added to the NPDC website to nominate yourself, or someone else, for the Panel. (link attached below).
So, what are Citizens Panels ?
At the Alliance we’ve come across what Citizen’s Panels are up to in Europe and the UK. It’s a growing trend for Councils and Governments in these countries.
To us, Citizens Panels are a way to get around democracy. This system is called “deliberative democracy”. Facilitators employed by the Councils are involved in leading “deliberate” discussions in workshops.
This is a link explaining Citizen Panels in Europe:
This is a quote from that link:
“Whereas participatory democracy is more about volume, with a large number of people generally involved in the consultation process”
(That would be US the voters, the democratic process)
“deliberative democracy aims to bring together a smaller group of community members, representative of the total population, to find common ground on a certain issue”
(Including people who don’t actually vote, school children - as happened with the Waitara Spatial Plan - or friends of the people who select the panel being invited – as happened with the consultation process done by the NPDC last year for climate adaptation).
We’re not sure if our local community is aware there have been a reasonable number of protests by everyday citizens in Europe, by those who don’t get invited on to these panels. Many of the people who pay the rates have not been happy with the outcomes of Citizen Panel meetings. (2 photos are attached as a summary of European protests from an internet search - with an explanation at the end about this new Internet Search platform).
In the case with Bell Block – just 25 people – will be given the chance to represent the ideas of everyone who lives in New Plymouth. These Citizen Panel groups have an NPDC approved facilitator run the sessions so the findings of the panel are heavily influenced by which facilitators the Council Project Team selects and what discussions they suggest.
With this Citizen Panel system, it would appear the 28,625 voters in New Plymouth don’t get involved until after the IWI, Hapu and Citizen Panel ideas have been put in a consultation document.
We are inclined to think, if new systems like Citizen Panels are being introduced to make decisions for the future of New Plymouth – shouldn’t the Councillors around the table make the decision this new way of doing things is going to be brought in ?
We also see this system is very new in NZ according to the OECD. The University of Otago, Skills Institute of NZ and Tasman Council have lodged their use of this system with the OECD.
So, the NPDC Project Team for the Bell Block Spatial Plan are bringing in a Citizens Panel concept hardly used by anyone else in NZ.
Why are New Plymouth the guinea pigs for NZ with a Citizens Panel concept ?
Sorry, this is turning in to a long story, but there is another point to be made.
A brand new RMA is coming out from the Government for consultation very soon – possibly before Xmas. There are major changes happening with the RMA and Regional Councils. (We have information coming about them very soon).
Why are a project team at the NPDC preparing a Spatial Plan covering topics that may no longer be covered by local Councils. A good example of this is Climate Change – the Coalition Government has signalled this will be removed from local Councils’ mandates with the new RMA.
Are the Waitara and Bell Block Community Boards and NPDC Project Teams pushing ahead with their own Spatial Plans as they want to make sure they put in place what they want rather than what the Coalition Government wants ? We would seriously hope this is not the case.
Don’t get us wrong – we are all for getting together with the community to work out what their aspirations are. We have been asking for this to be standard practice from the NPDC, and have very recently had very favourable discussions about this way of working with the Council on behalf of Ratepayers in the New Year.
But there is no plan at this stage for Ratepayers to put forward their ideas before the consultation documents are released for Bell Block. We are not OK with that.
We are not a fan of this concept where (statistically) tiny groups of people are handpicked by Council staff to represent the rest of the population, to get around the Democratic voting process. 25 people out of a Bell Block population of 8,490 is 0.29% of all people who live there.
We say a No to Citizens panels – unless the officials we voted for agree to this at a council meeting. And, in making that decision, they are properly informed of:
- The issues and protests they are creating in Europe,
- The implications they have for working outside of the democratic process,
- They are aware of the content the facilitators will cover in the workshops,
- They are happy for this Spatial Plan to be done twice, again when the new RMA advises what rules apply to Councils,
- And, they are happy to vote to use an untested system for NZ, here in New Plymouth.
Let’s see if our Council Representatives are prepared to consider all of these issues before they say Yes to Citizen Panels.
P.S. Click here for the link to the nomination form if you want to have a go at getting on to the panel. Forms must be completed by 5pm Sunday 14th December
https://haveyoursay.npdc.govt.nz/bell-block-spatial-plan
P.P.S. We have a note on the second page of the Perplexity Internet Search Result (attached), which explains about this new Internet Search System, and how results produce information often not seen on Google.
Posted: Fri 05 Dec 2025