Where is the land for development?

Press, Volume CXV, Issue 33804, 29 March 1975, Page 22

Where is the land for development?

The No. 2 Town and Country Planning Appeal Board has looked in vain for evidence that there is sufficient land within the greater Christchurch urban area for residential development.

The only evidence it had ever had indicated overwhelmingly that the Canterbury Regional Planning Authority’s opinion that there was land available was incorrect, the board says in a decision on a Paparua appeal. . “Without dissecting the totality of evidence placed before it, the board reiterates that there is not adequate land available for the needs of the greater Christchurch area, and that present policies in relation to the area appear clearly to be having an inhibiting effect upon the growth of Christchurch,” the decision says. The land subject to the board’s decision is 53 acres on the corner of Hendersons Road and Sparks Road, forming a roughly oblong intrusion into residential development. Three owners of the land, K. A. Bailey, H. G. Crofts and W. A. Gray, appealed against the refusal of the Paparua County Council to allow subdivision. The land was of high actual or potential value for the production of food, the board says, but persons trying to use it for rural purposes were experiencing difficulty because of the adjacent residential development. Domestic dogs from the residential areas were no help to a town supply dairy farmer because herds were! subject to nervous pressure,' which did not facilitate milk ! production.

The board also accepted that a market gardener could find his investment depleted as a result of forways by some of the more lightfingered members of the residential community. Finding that the land itself had limited value for food production, the board added that to use it for subdivision would simply shift the boundary of the urban area close to other land of high actual or potential value. “To accept a broad proposition that rural land adjacent to residential land cannot be

I used for rural purposes would be to trigger a chain reaction which would destroy the concept of the rural protection zones sought to be preserved by the planning authority,” the board says. The board has found, by a majority decision, that the appellants’ evidence does not warrant rejection of the council’s planning scheme. The dissenting member said it was quite unrealistic to regard the present area as being of sufficient importance to warrant its preservation for rural use, particularly having regard to the scarcity of sections in greater Christchurch. He thought that the provision for future reading, the provision for sewage and the virtual isolation of the appeal sites because they were almost surrounded by residential uses made their retention for rural purposes quite impractical. These views were shared to some extend by other members, so the decision must not be regarded as a total rejection of the land for future development, the board says.