Draft Naming Policy approved for public consultation

The policy's purpose is to provide a consistent approach to naming streets, reserves, council community facilities, public places and infrastructure in Tauranga. Photo / File

Tauranga City Council has approved its Draft Naming Policy to proceed to formal public consultation in November.

The policy's purpose is to provide a consistent approach to naming streets, reserves, council community facilities, public places and infrastructure in Tauranga.

The draft also looked to encourage locally significant Māori names for streets, reserves, community facilities and public places as well as enable greater visibility of mana whenua connections to Tauranga.

The policy included the ability to give new and existing streets, reserves, facilities and public places an English and te reo Māori name.

This is called dual-naming.

Councillors noted that dual-naming and renaming were treated separately by the policy.

The intention of the policy was not to give the city's streets brand new names in replacement of their current ones.

Ahead of public consultation, council will be running a short survey to gauge the public's feedback on some of the proposed changes within the policy, as part of its pre-engagement.

This feedback will be used to help guide decision making and changes to the policy as council goes through the review process.

This short survey will be available on the council's website and Facebook page from 5pm on August 5.