SUBDIVISIONS IN CITY.

Manawatu Standard, Volume LIV, Issue 303, 20 November 1934, Page 4

SUBDIVISIONS IN CITY.

STIPULATIONS AS TO SIZE. In a report to the City Council, at its meeting, last evening, the works committee said that the city solicitors had advised that the council had no general power to regulate the area of an allotment in a subdivision. The powers of the council were:—■ (a) To refuse its consent to a subdivisional plan on the ground that the land is not suitable for subdivision, vide the Municipal Corporations Act, 1933. This discretion must be separately exercised in the case of each plan submitted, (b) To make a general by-law fixing the minimum frontage and area of an allotment upon which a dwellinghouse may be erected. Such a by-law could only prohibit tlic erection of the dwelling and not prohibit the subdivision.

Therefore', said the report, the proposed addition to city by-law No. 5 was ultra vires. The amendment proposed was on tho lines that where a subdivision was approved, and a third of the sections sold, further subdivisions could not be carried out without the approval of the majority of the owners of the allotments already built upon.

The committee stated that it had been decided that the opinion be received and that the sub-committee which interviewed tbe solicitors on the previous suggested alteration to the by-law be authorised again to interview them as to the alterations necessary to fix a higher minimum frontage and area on which a dwelling may lie erected in certain specified areas in the citv.