Four main aims to Paparua changes

Press, Volume CXVI, Issue 34123, 8 April 1976, Page 18

Four main aims to Paparua changes

The controversial proposed change to the Paparua County Council’s district scheme has four main aims: the preservation of good farm land, the prevention of urban sprawl, the protection of established and future traffic routes and recreation areas, and the encouragement of a sense of community in the existing townships.

The council argues that past practices have resulted in a proliferation of uneconomic farming units. In the scheme statement for the proposed change, the council says that the Hand affected has been lused mainly for food | product ion, and this is still considered appropriate. Reasons for continuing this as a predominant use include the suitability of soils and climate, and the growing market, due in part to the growth of metropolitan Christchurch.

Over recent years, however, the provisions of both the Counties Act and the Town and Country Planning Act have resulted in subdivisions of five-acre, 10-acre, and 20-acre blocks, of which the council’s scheme statement says “very few could

be said to be operating as economic farming units. “This type of subdivision, if allowed to continue, would tend to result in the : building of large numbers of dwellings in the rural area, with such detrimental effects as pressure on services, loss of efficiency and amenity to existing traffic routes, loss of land to agricultural production, and loss of visual amenity (rural character),” the scheme statement says. The County Chairman (Mr D. H. Warren) acknowledged ; the unpopularity of the proposed change at this week’s v meeting of the council when, in his prepared statement, he said: “I am aware that the town planning change which the council has introduced to rural zones of the county is causing some concern to a number of property owners. “The council’s intentions as explained in the scheme statement, which forms part of the change, are to halt further fragmentation of

farm land by increasing the minimum areas for subdivision and to control the use of rural land for semiresidential purposes,” said Mr Warren.

“The council appreciates that changes of this nature are not popular measures, but is aware that it has a responsibility as a planning authority to comply with the provisions of the Town and Country Planning Act, and especially the 1973 amendment of the Act, which requires that every council in the preparation, implementation, and administration of its district planning scheme shall do two things.” said Mr Warren. These two obligations on local bodies were: first, to avoid the encroachment of urban development on land having a high actual or potential value for food production: and second, to prevent sporadic urban subdivision and development in rural areas. (Other stories, front page.)