Authority’s staff, policy defended

Press, Volume CXIV, Issue 33611, 13 August 1974, Page 11

Authority’s staff, policy defended

The attack by Cr A. Y. Shuker on the Canterbury Regional Planning Authority and its Director of Planning (Mr C. B. Millar) was unfair, and inaccurate in that it misconstrued Mr Millar’s views on planning, said the authority’s chairman (Mr D B. Rich).

Mr Rich, commenting on criticism expressed bv Cr Shuker at a meeting of the Paparua Countv Council said that he would have replied earlier but for his absence from Christchurch. “As chairman of the authority. I am concerned that a member of the authority should attack a member of the staff who is not in a position to defend himself” said Mr Rich. "If Cr Shuker wants to achieve a change in the policy of the authority, he has got to convince his fellow member* of the merits of his views. This he has not managed to do. "Mr Miller is acknowledged here and overseas as an expert, and he has served the authority and this region well.” Mr Rich said that Mr Millar had tried, over a period.; to get planning done over a wider region, including Papa-

rua County. He had attempted to bring about coordinated planning in the wider sphere, and to set in motion moves to cope with urban growth.

The record ciearlv showed this, and if Mr Millar had been unable to achieve his aims, it was because of the failure of local body politicians to recognise the need and urgency. Their failure had led. as witness the Rolleston scheme, to Government intervention, At the Paparua meeting, Cr Shuker, speaking of Rolleston, said that neither the authority nor its director had shown any interest in urban planning for metropolitan Christchurch and its! environs.