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Rating Areas

Council has introduced new rating areas (semi-rural and rural), and redefined the urban area.

Urban Area 

For rating purposes, the urban area includes properties currently situated within Kaikoura township stormwater management area and incorporating properties in the Seaview and Ocean Ridge subdivision areas and the Kaikoura Peninsula.

Semi-Rural Area 

This area encompasses all properties within a 10 kilometre radius of the town centre including Peketa and Hapuku villages,  Inland Road up to but not including Kowleigh, and the Kaikoura Flats, but excluding all property within the urban area.

Rural Area 

This is all property outside the urban and semi-rural areas.

The above map indicates the boundaries of the new rating areas, which apply only for the purposes of the footpath & streetlight rate, the town centre rate, the harbour rate, and the stock control and rural fire rates.

The pink area, is the current urban area for rating purposes.  As development continues, this area may be extended to incorporate new areas as considered appropriate to meet the intent of these rates – i.e. in areas where footpaths, streetlights and/or stormwater is developed.

The yellow area is the semi-rural area for rating purposes.  It is an area defined for its proximity to urban services, and has no relationship to the size or value of individual properties within, or outside of, this area.

The pale green area represents the rural area, and is effectively all rateable land outside the urban and semi-rural areas.  The dark green areas are conservation land areas which are non-rateable.

It is the intention of these new rating areas that differentials be applied to acknowledge that it is the properties within the urban area that benefit most from certain urban-type services, properties on the outskirts of the township benefit to a lesser extent, and properties further away from the town benefit least of all.

Therefore, for each of the following three targeted rates (harbour rate, town centre rate, and footpath & streetlighting rate) a differential has been applied thus:

Urban          1:1
Semi-rural    0.5:1
Rural            0.25:1

This essentially means that, for certain activities, urban properties pay twice as much per dollar of capital value than semi-rural properties do, and four times as much per dollar of capital value than rural properties do.

In terms of the stock control and rural fire control rates, it is all properties outside of the defined urban area that would pay these particular rates.