2. Background Volume One • promote and facilitate pre-hearing meetings; • promote and facilitate joint and combined hearings to involve the adjoining council in the decision making process; and • notify, in terms of consultation under the First Schedule of the RMA, the affected community of interest, even if this extends beyond the boundaries of the MEP. Advocacy Promote the Council’s perspective on resource management issues to adjoining local authorities and central government, including (where appropriate) making submissions on proposed national policy statements and policy statements of adjoining territorial authorities. Monitoring the efficiency and effectiveness of the policies or methods Monitoring is an important part of decision-making processes. It examines the progress being made towards the achievement of objectives and the efficiency and effectiveness of the policy options used. The RMA recognises the value of monitoring and gives the Council major responsibilities in this area through Section 35 of the RMA. Of direct relevance to the MEP, Section 35 of the RMA requires the Council to monitor: • the state of the environment; • the efficiency and effectiveness of policies, rules and other methods contained within the MEP; and • the exercise of resource consents. Monitoring is an important mechanism for assessing how the MEP and the Council are fulfilling the purpose of the RMA in promoting the sustainable management of the natural and physical resources of Marlborough. With the number and range of resource management issues, objectives, policies and methods contained within the MEP, the scope for monitoring is large. However, for practical reasons priorities will need to be set for the monitoring program. In Chapters 4 to 19 of Volume 1, anticipated environmental results that are the intended outcomes of implementing the provisions of the chapter in order to address the resource management issues of significance are identified. Unless otherwise specified, the anticipated environmental results are 10 year targets. For each anticipated environmental result, a series of indicators will be used to monitor the effectiveness of the provisions. These indicators form the basis of the Council’s monitoring programme and will, where appropriate or necessary, be prioritised. The monitoring programme will be undertaken in a comprehensive strategy, comprising three major components that reflect the responsibilities given to the Council under Section 35 of the RMA. These include: • State of the Environment Monitoring, which measures existing and cumulative effects and establishes levels of environmental quality against which future changes can be measured; • Compliance Monitoring, which compares anticipated and actual effects of permitted activities and their standards with activities granted resource consent and their conditions; and • MEP Achievement Monitoring, which assesses the effectiveness of the objectives and policies within the MEP in achieving sustainable resource management. 2 – 10