Change to pool by-law sought

Press, 28 August 1984, Page 4

Change to pool by-law sought

Changes to the Christchurch City Council’s new pool fencing by-law to give it more flexibility will be put to the council’s town planning committee by a group of Christchurch pool owners. More than 80 pool owners attended a meeting at the Heaton Intermediate School last evening to discuss the fencing by-law. The council’s building engineer, Mr Bryan Bluck, and Crs Helen Garrett and A. G. James were also at the meeting. The main change proposed at the meeting was to change a requirement to secure the pool area to a requirement to secure the property area, said one of the meeting organisers, Mrs Doreen Collins. “Nobody could actually say what the pool area is. Even Mr Bluck could not define the area,” she said. “A lot of other things in the by-law need changing, but we wanted to be fairly specific when we approached the town planning committee.” Mrs Collins said the problem with the by-law was that too many different in-

terpretations could be put on it, making it unenforceable. She and another pool owner, Mr Allan Rosfing, will represent the pool owners’ point of view at the next town planning meeting on Thursday. A petition, signed by about 60 people, will be given to Cr Garrett to present to the next full council meeting. The petition states that it is the responsibility of pool owners to make their pools secure, that the by-law is too loose and can be interpreted at the whim of council employees, and that, although the introduction of the by-law is inevitable, it should state “property should be secure.”