Submissions to the draft Long Term Plan have closed and hearings commence next week for around 180 submitters who are taking the opportunity to speak to their submissions.

Meantime, here are some statistics on the Draft Long-Term Plan campaign at a glance:

Just over 1,300 total submissions (nearly doubled in the final week)

• 125 were on behalf of an organisation, community group or association

• 188 wish to be heard.

• Over 13,600 sessions on the Have Your Say (EHQ) portal

• 41% of these were engaged sessions*

• The most visited topic page was Public Transport followed closely by ERP (aside from the main landing/about pages).

• 998 visitors to the LTP page on www.ecan.govt.nz

• 357 individuals visited the sample property rates calculator.

Social media was a key engagement channel for the campaign. Across 4.5 weeks of advertising we saw over 624k impressions, and over 4,500 clicks through to EHQ.

Looking at the 800+ comments on Facebook, most were negative, some were positive support of our proposals, and there was some degree of self-moderation amongst users. Overall, the main themes coming through were:

• Affordability and cost of living, unhappiness with rates increases from Environment Canterbury and all councils

• Suggestions we should be cutting internal costs before increasing rates

• That rates increases are covering the cost of past mistakes

• Questioning whether public input is worthwhile, and actually listened to

• Some support of increased biodiversity efforts was noted.