Photo: RNZ / Nate McKinnon
Fire and Emergency New Zealand is promising more moves on local planning this year.
Most of the country was still not covered by local advisory committees, six years after laws came in requiring they be set up.
The committees are meant to play a key role in getting local communities the emergency response resources they need.
An evaluation last year of the seven committees set up so far since 2020 said they were working as intended.
But it also said FENZ must set up mechanisms to act on committee advice before it established any more groups.
"Many of the challenges experienced in the first year are because Fire and Emergency did not have systems in place to advise, or respond to the advice of LACs [local advisory committees]."
FENZ said it expected to make decisions on setting up the remaining nine committees - which were in the most populous areas - by mid-2023.
No actual local plans have been produced.
But the agency said the law referred to a process of "local planning", rather than "local plans", and it had been doing planning at station, district, regional and national level for years.
However, FENZ's own reports on LACs from 2018 refer repeatedly to producing "local plans".
The 2022 evaluation report said some people valued the committees and they had plugged-in people on them, but others questioned if it was just another layer of consultation with little sign that FENZ was taking much notice.