Special cover for urban land loss from disaster

Press, 20 April 1982, Page 2

Special cover for urban land loss from disaster

Parliamentary reporter

Legislation protecting against loss of urban land from natural disaster, should be introduced into Parliament this session.

: The Minister in Charge of the Earthquake and War Damage Commission (Mr Quigley) has released the suggestions of a special working party set up to look at special cover for loss of urban land — following the Abbotsford and Grey Lynn landslips. The suggestions have yet to be discussed by the Cabinet. ;

The working party has presented a detailed proposal, the features of which are a national fund to be financed by. compulsory property levy. Cover is planned for accidental damage to urban land : arising from any cause whatsoever — other than" by settlement, soil shrinkage, or compaction of the land. It would also include damage to retaining walls.

No cover would be given for damage to property or improvements already covered under the Earthquake and War Damage Act, or to fences, trees, shrubs and other vegetation. Land eligible would have to be used principally or exclusively for residential, commercial, or industrial purposes. Land used for purposes ancillary to these, by churches, schools and hospitals, would also be eligible. This land would either have to be in use, or proposed for use under an operative, or proposed district scheme.

Land specifically excluded from cover would be farmland, and land used for forestry and other rural purposes, unless the use of all of such land was permitted for residential, commercial and industrial purposes in an operative or proposed district scheme. Roads, airport runways, railway and wharfs would be excluded. Where a landowner was eligible for cover, he would pay an excess of $lOOO or 10

per cent of the current land value - whichever was the lessen-

To finance the fund which would provide the cover, a compulsory levy would be struck on all qualifying land at a rate of between one cent and three cents on every $lOO of land value as in valuation roils at March 31 each year. The levy would be collected by territorial local authorities in rates collections. The working party has calculated ■ the effect on the average residential ratepayer (owning land worth $8800) and paying one cent at 88c a year. At a levy of three cents, $2.64 would be paid. The working party notes that because some local authorities’ do not collect rates by instalment, one year would have to. lapse before the fund would be large enough to pay out, unless the Government paid the Earthquake and War Damage Commission enough on a month-by-month basis to meet claims expected, . To set the scheme up, the

Valuation Department would have to spend $15,000 in the first year providing each of New Zealand’s 233 local authorities with a valuation roll for eligible properties, the working party said. Costs to the department of maintaining the scheme would be about $75,000 a year. The cost to the Earthquake and War Damage Commission would be about $50,000 annually, and would be met from the scheme.

A timetable proposed for introduction of the scheme, subject to legislation being passed later this session, set the first local authority levy at June or August, 1984. If the Government accepted responsibility for funding in the first year the Commission could accept claims from April, 1984. If it did not, the first claims would be accepted from April, 1985, after local authorities had passed levies on.

If legislation was passed before July 1 this year, the scheme would come into operation at all stages, one year earlier.