The City Council and Building Permits

Press, Volume LXXI, Issue 21461, 1 May 1935, Page 10

The City Council and Building Permits

It is not easy to discover what principles, if any, govern the attitude of the Christchurch City Council and its town planning committo > towards applications for building permit:;. At a meeting of the council on March 25 the town planning committee recommended that an application to erect a guest house in Carlton Mill road be not granted because the area concerned had been zoned for residential purposes in the Christchurch town planning scheme. In the same report the committee advised the council to grant an application to erect an ice skating rink in Salisbury street, although this area had also been zoned for residential purposes. The relevant clause in the report read as follows: The committee refers the matter to the council with the idea of giving publicity to the application, and asks that in the event of no substantial objections being received, the committee be given power to grant the application. When we pointed out that the committee seemed to have been guilty of an inconsistency, its chairman, Cr. E. H. Andrews, claimed that " the committee had given no indi- " cation whether it proposed to " grant or refuse the application." If that was indeed the case it appears that the town planning committee was guilty of some carelessness in the wording of its report. When the question was reopened at the meeting of the council on Monday night, two petitions were received, one supporting the application and one opposing it At the same time it was revealed that the council's own town planning expert, tiie adviser to the Town Planning Board, and the local Government expert of the 'Department of Internal Affairs had all opposed the application. These are surely " substantial objections"; yet, in the face of them the council, on the motion of the chairman of the town planning committee, decided to grant the application. Not one councillor was able to give a good reason for the decision or to answer the arguments advanced against it. As we have already pointed out, the ! matter cannot be regarded as unimportant. Town planning schemes J are notoriously difficult to administer; and in this case the council has

created a pr?cedent which can only add to "its difficulties. It is no excuse to say that there are already industrial premises in the area concerned; for if the excuse is valid, then the area has been wrongly zoned.