MasterPlan clients Thames Coromandel District Council (TCDC) in New Zealand have successfully been awarded an Award of Merit at the NZ Planning Institute Annual Conference in Greymouth last month.

The award is in recognition of “a meritorious contribution to the practice of planning” and was one of a number of excellence awards handed out last week by the institute.

This is the first Council in NZ to be using MasterPlan and in fact, THE first online tool in NZ for helping the public find the District Plan rules and policies that also gives you the capacity to track resource and building consents.
TCDC Chief Executive Steve Ruru says around 11 months of teamwork at the council went into making the new on-line tools a reality and all the staff involved deserved a huge pat on the back.

“This award recognises the fact that we are the first council in the country to offer an on-line tool for interrogating our District Plan and are leading the way for others. Other councils around the country are now looking at how to do it. It’s still a work in progress and we are making improvements all the time, but it’s an innovative tool for making our District Plan easier to understand and access.”

He says the on-line consent tracking system is also proving popular with many people using it to keep track of the progress of their building and resource consents.

“We know that these are the kind of services that our residents and ratepayers want to see us offering. It’s about making it easier for everyone to find out what they need to know about our District Plan – and tracking progress of consents,” he says.

This is the second award for excellence for MasterPlan/Consent Tracking. In 2006 the council won an innovation excellence award at the Association of Local Government Information Management conference.