Subdivisions

Press, Volume CIV, Issue 30827, 12 August 1965, Page 12

Subdivisions

Sir, —Upon completing a subdivision in the Paparua county I am informed that I have to pay the council 20 per cent of the value of the five acres deducted from a large area to be used as farm land, on the specious plea of the necessity to upgrade the 7.5 chains of road fronting this area, at £lO a chain of road frontage.— Yours, etc., J. E. ROYDS. Weedons, August 4, 1965. [The chairman of the Paparua County Council (Cr. R. J. Roberts) said: “The provision of the Counties Act relating to the subdivision of land enable a council to require payment of up to half the cost of the upgrading of a road fronting a subdivision. The amount payable is determined not on valuation of property but on the length of road frontage. A good many rural properties are being subdivided into five-acre holdings which can be regarded as ‘rural residential allotments’ rather than farming units, and it is the housing development which follows such subdivisions which creates an increased demand for the extension of sealed road surfaces to the cost of which the council considers some contribution from the subdivider by no means unreasonable.”]