Judge rules against regional council

Press, 21 December 1981, Page 6

Judge rules against regional council

PA Auckland An 18-month-old regional council appears likely to be dissolved by a High Court' judge’s finding that the Local Government Commission acted secretly and unlawfully in the early stages of setting it up. The Thames Valley United Council will consider its future at its first meeting, next year. Its chairman, Mr H. W. Hayward, said yesterday: “I would imagine we cannot carry on.” The council covers the Coromandel Peninsula, the Hauraki Plains, Ohinemuri county, and Piako county. It was considering a draft of its regional planning objectives' last Friday a few hours before the High Court at Auckland released Mr Justice Barker’s written judgment.

His Honour has ruled in. favour of 12 Coromandel residents’ groups .that the Local .Government Commission failed to meet a statutory obligation to test public opinion before it. issued a provisional scheme for a Thames Valley region. -

His ; Honour said: “The commission went part of the way in the consultative, process when it met local bodies; it never went further and took the public into its confidence. Rather, correspondence indicates that the commission enjoined the various local authorities to secrecy.”

The Minister of Local Government (Mr Highet) had not seen the judgment yesterday. He would discuss it with his department, he said. Mr Hayward believed it would take a year for a new regional body to be set up. In the meantime, he said, local authorities in the region would return to an arrangement for informal meetings on matters common to them all.

He said the council had no staff or buildings of its own. It used the resources of its member councils, and had a budget of less than $50,000 a year.