FAQs

RCL schedules will record the important landscape values of an area. These schedules will assist Council and plan users with evaluating the appropriateness or otherwise of resource consent and plan change applications, and improve the efficiency of this process.

Landscape values encompass landscape character and visual amenity values. They relate to the things that we value about the places that we live, play, visit and work in.   

They can be physical things (like mountains or rivers), things we experience (like views, how wild and remote a place looks to you) and those things that make a landscape meaningful to us (like mana whenua associations and traditions, historic elements and recreation features).  

A RCL corresponds to a Rural Character Landscape (RCL) area.  The term RCL is used in the District Plan and relates to all of the Rural zoned land that is not identified as an Outstanding Natural Feature or Outstanding Natural Landscape.  The RCL is not mapped in the Proposed District Plan, however has a range of policies in Chapter 21 that address the management of these parts of the District.

No. RCLs and their associated rules already exist in the District Plan, and will not be changed by the RCL schedules. The purpose of RCL schedules is to help with evaluating resource consent and plan change applications.

The District Plan requires the maintenance of landscape character and the maintenance or enhancement of visual amenity values. If you are applying for a resource consent or plan change, Council will use these schedules as a ‘starting point’ for considering how the proposal will affect the landscape values of the RCL area.  

Yes.  Many places already have schedules of values for their very high value landscapes and features (referred to as Outstanding Natural Landscapes and Features).  Other places have schedules for their Amenity Landscapes (or RMA s7(c) landscapes), which are the type of landscape that RCL areas are.

A team of landscape architects and GIS experts have mapped the RCL areas in the Upper Clutha using a broad range of GIS resources such as 1m contour data, geomorphological mapping, land type mapping, soils mapping and the PDP zones and overlay mapping. Generally speaking, the RCL areas encompass a part of the Upper Clutha Basin that has a reasonably similar landscape character, particularly in terms of the underling landform or geomorphology.

Several RCL areas amount to ‘fragments’ of RCL wedged between urban and ONF/L areas.  Others, such as the land to the east of the Clutha Mata-Au are large enough that distinct landscape character areas are evident.