Farewell Tributes To Regional Planner

Press, Volume CI, Issue 29938, 27 September 1962, Page 15

Farewell Tributes To Regional Planner

The Christchurch Regional Planning Authority had been able to build into an effective planning organisation which had achieved status in the community, but it had been achieved largely as a result of the exceptional work of Miss N. Northioraft, the regional planner since the inception of the authority seven years ago. said the chairman (Mr E. J. Bradshaw) last evening. He was speaking at a farewell to Miss Northcroft who is leaving to go into private practice as a town planning consultant.

Members of the authority, its committees, staff and members of constituent local authorities attended the farewell at which Mr Bradshaw presented Miss Northcroft with a wristlet watch and a chair.

Town planning was a "most unpopular pastime in anybody’s language." said Mr Bradshaw, but under Miss Northcroft’s "guiding genius" it had reached an important stage in Christchurch. Before Miss Northcroft joined the authority she was town planning officer for the City Council for six years and it was pleasing that she would still be in Christchurch when in private practice. Miss Northcroft had laid

the foundations in town planning that would not be fully appreciated until history came to be written, said the Deputy-Mayor (Mr H. P. Smith).

The town planner learned to love his town—he loved its faults and cherished afl its virtues, said Miss Northcroft. When she came to Christchurch she found it was a town already interested in planning, and that had been a great help. The late Mr W. S. Mac Gibbon, chairman of the old Metropolitan Town Planning Committee, had helped her, as had the City Engineer (Mr E. Somers) and Cr. G. Griffiths, then chairman of the town planning committee. Miss Northcroft said the authority showed the value of co-ordination and co-oper-ation between the various local bodies. Without that little could be achieved, but with it the authority could become an important body in the community.