Planning And Consents: EDS Hails Decision In Kaipara “Blank Pages” Case
September 1st, 2010
The Environment Court has delivered an important signal to councils tempted to deal with intransigent objectors by simply closing down communications. In a case brought by the Environmental Defence Society, the Court has found Kaipara District Council created a “deliberate hiatus” in its legislated planning obligations by failing to confront a vociferous local farmers’ lobby group which opposed the council’s attempts to protect outstanding landscapes in the area. In doing so, it “took matters beyond breaking point” in terms of any scope for a “rolling” approach to the review of district plans.
KDC discussions with local stakeholders, including Farmers of NZ, a local lobby group with a trenchant view about private property rights, led KDC to decide to take no further action on “identification of and consultation on outstanding landscapes” in the area covered by the district plan. Farmers of NZ is backing sitting councillor Bill Guest for mayor in November’s KDC elections, with Guest seeking to oust the KDC’s current CEO, and has the support of sitting Northland Regional Council chairman Mark Farnsworth for the only Kaipara seat on the NRC.
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Particularly at issue are areas such as Mangawhai Spit, where there have been physical altercations and abuse hurled since the closure of an informal road along the spit in 2008. EDS said it had “scored a significant judgement,” which Executive Director Gary Taylor said should serve as a guide other local Govts. At issue was KDC’s release of a chapter on landscape issues which had only blank pages. A draft prepared in March was not included for councillors to sign off later in the year, after council-run focus groups found “entrenched” opposition to the landscape protection elements of the plan.
The council decided in November 2008 it wasn’t worth ratepayers’ expense trying to fight them, and forwarded its draft district plan with a blank chapter on the issue. EDS argued this was a breach of the Resource Management Act. Taylor says “we expect a Variation to be notified within two months or we will go back to Court.”
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