Appeal on village plan

Press, Volume CXI, Issue 32711, 14 September 1971, Page 1

Appeal on village plan

An application for the hearing of an appeal from the Social Service Council of the Diocese of Christchurch about a 350-bed village for old people at Lower Styx will be lodged with the Town and Country Planning Appeal Board this week.

The application is lodged under Section 308 of the Town and Country Planning Act, 1953, and the appeal is against the Waimairi County Council’s decision to decline jurisdiction in the matter. It is expected that the appeal will be heard within the next two mpnths.

The most recent delay in obtaining a fixture has been caused by the publication of the council’s reviewed town planning scheme. This did not change the rural zoning in the area, but it still required an application for a hearing to be lodged under another section of the act. Mr F. A. Gunn, Secretary-

manager of the Social Service Council, said yesterday that if the appeal board approved the. village scheme, the: council would be ready to start work on it immediately. Objections had been raised to the village scheme mainly by the Agricultural Council and the Christchurch Regional Planning Authority, that the land was zoned for agricultural purposes and that the scheme meant that too many old people Would be put together in an isolated position, Mr Gunn said.

“However, the land is not being used for agricultural purposes at all, and it is really just inside the boundary of rural zoning,” he said.

"Neither is the proposed site cut off from the city, as they would have us believe; it has a regular bus service.” More than 200 people had applied for entry to the proposed village even before it had been advertised; judging by this, it was evident that there was a large number of old people who wanted to

live away from the centre of a city, said Mr Gunn. "There are already many old people’s homes in town. By putting a village at Lower Styx we are trying to provide a wider range of accommodation in various parts of the city,” he said: