ROTORUA 18.08.11: Rotorua District Council (RDC) has appointed Liam Dagg to the position of Planning Services Manager.

Mr Dagg is currently Policy Team Leader for the Planning Services Department and has been acting manager since last month when former Planning head Tracey May left to take up a position in Australia.

RDC Economic & Regulatory Services Group Manager Mark Rawson said he expected a relatively seamless transition as Mr Dagg had already played a major role across all the council’s planning functions during his six years with RDC. He said Mr Dagg's skills and experience were an excellent fit with the council's wider objectives in the regulatory and economic areas.

“Liam has been very involved in both policy and consents planning activities, and his more recent key focus has been on fulfilling our legislative obligation to develop a new District Plan for Rotorua.

“He will continue to drive the District Plan review project through to its formal notification next year and will also have responsibility for maintaining and further developing the department’s highly regarded regulatory performance.”

Mr Dagg said the council’s current Planning team was a very experienced and highly professional group of people and was right up amongst the best performing councils in the country. He was looking forward to working with the team to build on their successes to date.

“I’m excited about the opportunity to take the District Plan to its next phase and to oversee production of a 2012 State of the Environment Report.

“I’m also looking forward to putting in place mechanisms to align our Planning activities with the council’s new Sustainable Economic Growth Strategy and Long Term Plan, both of which are currently under development.”

Prior to joining Rotorua District Council Mr Dagg was involved in regulatory and strategic planning roles for the New South Wales and Queensland state governments, covering major infrastructure programmes including highways and mines.

He is also a qualified archaeologist.

Liam Dagg formally assumes his new role as Rotorua District Council’s Planning Services Manager on Monday (22 August.)

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