Economic Development Strategy and Action Plan

Economic Development Strategy and Action Plan

Central Hawke’s Bay is experiencing a surge of positivity, with strong economic growth, population growth and a clear vision to deliver on its future prosperity. 

Council has recognised the importance of Economic Development for the future social and economic well-being of the District, successfully securing funding from the Provincial Growth Fund to develop its first Economic Development Strategy and Action Plan.  

This strategy sets out the key actions for us to support and accelerate economic growth for businesses, communities and tourism in the district. It is an ambitious programme, one which the Council and the community need to work together on, side by side. It is also not a static picture – we will monitor its implementation and adapt to opportunities and changes that arise, updating the action plan component annually.

You can view a copy of the economic development action plan here

The purpose of the strategy and action plan is to consider the district’s economic advantages and high productivity assets and attributes; including quality agricultural land, natural resources, temperate climate, central location, and an excellent transport network, including the Napier Port. 

Council also intends to use the information for a range of other purposes, including:

• Forming the basis of the work programme for Council’s newly created Economic Development Advisor role
• Integration with the Matariki Hawke’s Bay Regional Development Strategy and Action Plan refresh
• Promoting with certainty investment opportunities to attract new businesses to Central Hawke’s Bay
• Supporting existing business to diversify
• Supporting businesses to increase productivity and ‘add value’ through innovation
• Investigating opportunities for export and collaboration.

The outcomes from this work will result in positive benefits for the community and include:

• Increased job opportunities

Attracting new business, growing existing business, and increasing productivity will create more jobs and a wider range of employment across different industry types.

• Increased prosperity

Increased productivity is a contributor towards providing more and better paying jobs, thereby increasing the prosperity of employees and employers. 

• Diversification and increased resilience

Diversification across a range of different industries protects the local economy against market shocks and increases economic resilience.

• Overall improvement in the economic well-being of the local economy 

Employment enables members of the community to participate more fully in society.  Regular income provides employees and their families with the ability to make lifestyle choices e.g. access to warm homes, participation in sports and recreation, leisure, food choices, health care.

Working together to achieve these outcomes

Partnerships are recognised as being vitally important for delivering on this strategy. While Council has a direct delivery role in a small number of the opportunities covered in the strategy.  In most of them Council will need to partner with the community, hapū and marae, businesses, organisations, central government and other Councils to achieve the goals.

Council had a number of partnerships prior to the development of this strategy, and these will continue to be important. In many cases our recent work on associated projects has strengthened these partnerships – for example our working relationship with Te Taiwhenua o Tamatea on the Ngā Ara Tipuna initiative. We have also identified new partnership opportunities that can be leveraged for the benefit of our community – for example, connecting landowners to central government advisory and funding services in the Ministry of Primary Industries and Te Puni Kōkiri.

The most important partnerships for economic development purposes will be with industry and business in our district. Council’s role in these partnerships will range, for example, from facilitating networks and clusters, making information available, ensuring key infrastructure is in place, advocating on behalf of groups of businesses to regional and national bodies, to actively organising and promoting particular activities. We will rely on business to actively engage with us on economic development – telling us the key issues they need solving and how Council can assist given the range of tools we have available.

For more information, or for a hard copy of this strategy contact Central Hawke's Bay District Council.

Cyclone Gabrielle 2023 - Hawke's bay Regional Recovery Plan 

In the wake of the devastation of Cyclone Gabrielle to our region, the Regional Recovery Agency shares the first iteration of the Hawke's Bay Regional Recovery Plan. 

 The Central Hawke’s Bay Tourism Destination Plan and Need Assessment

The Central Hawke’s Bay Tourism Destination Plan and Need Assessment was funded by MBIE’s Tourism Infrastructure Fund (TIF).

It is designed to be flexible by providing direction to enhancing the visitor economy and guide both the public and private sector decision making.

The plan outlines Central Hawke’s Bay’s current visitor economy and examines the destination strengths of the District. It identifies several ‘hero experiences’ which Council could focus on to grow the visitor economy, as well as target markets which would be interested in these experiences. It then creates itineraries for these markets and experiences. Lastly, it creates an action plan to develop supporting ‘hard and soft’ infrastructure to support the development of these experiences.

The plan creates a clearly articulated work programme which will support future funding applications to the TIF and other funds, and provides guidance to the Central Hawke’s Bay Tourism Coordinator’s work programme.

You can read the Central Hawke’s Bay Tourism Destination Plan and Need Assessment here.

External Links:

Business Hawke’s Bay

Hawke’s Bay Tourism

Matariki Hawke's Bay Regional Development Strategy

Great Things Grow Here