VALUE OF LAND

Otago Daily Times, Issue 26540, 15 August 1947, Page 7

VALUE OF LAND

USE FOR INDUSTRIES EFFECTS OF ACT DISCUSSED P.A. GREYMOUTH, Aug. 14. Allegations that the operation of the Land Sales Act was retarding the establishment of secondary industries as well as the settlement of returned servicemen on the land were made at a meeting of the executive of the South Island Local Bodies’ Association. It was suggested by the chairman, Mr E. H. Andrews, Mayor of Christchurch, that the principal difficulties arose through inconsistencies in valuations. It appeared to many that Government valuers from o’utside districts did not know the values as well as those domiciled in a particular district. Replying to the association’s representations that there should be greater discretionary powers for land sales committees in dealing with applications in relation to the establishment of new industries in the South Island, the Minister of Lands, Mr Skinner, stated that the Government kept a close watch on the general. operation of the act and recent decisions on appeals and concluded that the act gave the court discretion to deal fairly with the owners of industrial lands. The chairman said he did not think the association’s representations dealt so much with the actual regulations as with inconsistencies. When the appeal court fixed a sum to be paid for a block "of land on a railway with a siding at about £250 an acre—at which figure owners would not sell—and then another block without a siding was allowed to go through at £4OO an acre, buyers and sellers did not know where they were. In regard to industrial sites, Mr Andrews said, the Minister’s letter was decisive. Some council members considered that certain land should be of more value to an industrialist than to a man who wanted to build a few private houses. For instance, in one case in Christchurch, a difference of £3OOO or £4OOO meant nothing to a company with a capital of £1,000,000 but it meant a great deal to the ven-, dors and the result was that it looked as if the land concerned was going to be idle for many years. “I do not think we should do any more in the matter ” said the Mayor of Dunedin, Mr Cameron, “I think this matter is outside the jurisdiction of the association. We should do all possible to foster secondary industry but I doubt the wisdom of the association criticising the decisions of a judicial body. It hears all the evidence and we do not.”