Terminology

Go back to Section 32 - Methods of implementation

relevancy - the objective must relate to the identified issue and be relevant to one or more of the matters in Part 2 of the RMA.

usefulness - the objective must be useful for decision-making and/or for subsequent effectiveness evaluation, or at least as a means of clearly communicating the intent of the policies and methods that follow.

achievability - the objective should seek an outcome that can be achieved with the tools and resources likely to be available to, or be influenced by, the local authority. The functions of the local authority under sections 30 and 31 will be relevant.

reasonableness - the objective should not seek an outcome that would have greater costs either environmentally or economically/socially. Also relevant may be the time scale involved.

Formal cost-benefit analysis (CBA) - involves the monetisation of costs and benefits, to provide the most robust basis for evaluation. CBA is an evaluation tool developed in the context of specific interventions (ie, a particular policy or programme) and not necessarily suitable for highly complex, multi-intervention documents such as district and regional plans.

The OECD defines CBA as:

"Cost/Benefit Analysis is a technique for deciding whether to make a change. As its name suggests, it compares the values of all benefits from the action under consideration and the costs associated with it."

Treasury defines CBA as:

"Cost benefit analysis is a decision-making tool that aims to assess the value of a proposal or competing proposals on a consistent basis.

"This is done by quantifying all costs and benefits in monetary terms, and discounting them to a common point in time to determine the net benefits of each proposal. There are techniques for ensuring that social costs and benefits are included or taken account of (even those that are difficult to measure in monetary terms) and for ensuring that there is no double counting of costs or benefits."