The appellants, the North Shore City Council and the owners of land in the area around Long Bay and Okura River sought to modify the metropolitan urban limits so that an area of some 700 hectares in the area would be zoned within the urban limit [1] The Environment Court allowed the appeals in part, "to the extent that the regional council is directed to alter the line of metropolitan urban limits in the proposed regional policy statement so that instead of following Glenvar Road, the line follows the watershed or catchment boundary between the Long Bay and Okura catchments.

In coming to this determination the Court had decided that, "We have concluded that urbanisation of the part of the subject land in the Okura catchment would necessarily have significant adverse effects on the environment of the Okura Estuary, and that the estuary, its high quality waters and ecosystem, possesses life supporting capacity which deserve to be safeguarded.

The Court held:"The method of applying s 5 then involves an overall broad judgment of whether a proposal would promote the sustainable management of natural and physical resources.

Such a judgment allows for comparison of conflicting considerations and the scale or degree of them, and their relative significance or proportion in the final outcome.

[5] In the 2014 decision, Environmental Defence Society v New Zealand King Salmon the Supreme Court declined to follow the "overall broad judgment" approach.