Designations

What is a Designation? 

A designation is land set aside for future public works or projects like roads, telecommunications and electricity networks, or schools. Requiring authorities make applications for designations by lodging Notices of Requirement to council for inclusion in the District Plan.

A designation enables a requiring authority to undertake works in the designated area without the need for resource consent under the District Plan, unless works will be undertaken that are outside the scope of the designation. However, they may still need to obtain resource consents from the Northland Regional Council.

If an area of your property is designated for one of these purposes you cannot make changes to the land without prior written consent of the requiring authority. Examples of requiring authorities include Far North District Council, the New Zealand Transport Agency and the Minister of Education.

To find out more about the designation process under the RMA, check out the Ministry for the Environment’s An everyday guide to the RMA: The designation process.

Designations in the Proposed Far North District Plan

As part of the review of the Far North District Plan, before notification of the Proposed District Plan in July 2022 all requiring authorities with designations in the Operative District Plan were invited to give written notice of whether they require the current designations to be included, with or without modification, in the Proposed District Plan.

Notices of requirement are not required for designations that are being rolled over from the current District Plan into the Proposed District Plan (with or without modification) or being removed from the Proposed District Plan as they are no longer required.

Written notices received from requiring authorities who wished to rollover their current designations, with or without modification, are provided under the 'Notices of requirement/Designation rollover notices' heading below.

Requiring authorities provided their decisions on designations, in response to Council recommendations, by 12 August 2026. Written notices of decisions are provided below:

Requiring Authority Decisions

Council decisions on its own designations are included in the Council resolution available here.

Notices of Requirment/Designation rollover notices

Notices of Requirement are required for new designations. Council received two notices of requirement for new designations from Minister for the Environment for inclusion in the Far North District Plan. The notice of requirement for each new designation is provided below: