TOWN PLANNING

Southland Times, Issue 20939, 23 November 1929, Page 8

TOWN PLANNING

INTERESTING REVIEW LEGISLATION FOR NEXT “■ »■ SESSION REMEDYING DEFECTS One of the Acts sponsored last session by the Hon. P. A. de la Perrelle, Minister of Internal Affairs, provided for amendment of the town planning legislation. The new Act, which comes into force in January, is intended to correct defects in the present law. Conversing with a Southland Times reporter yesterday Mr de la Perrelle mads some interesting comment on the new Act. “The sole purpose of the Act,” remarked the Minister, “is to remedy certain defects and anomalies in the machinery of the Town Planning Act 1926. There is nothing in the Act which contravenes in any way the principles embodied in the Act. It neither takes away or adds to the powers which it was clearly the intention of the legislature to confer upon local authorities for the direction and control of developments taking place within their districts, in the interests of public health, safety, convenience, amenity and general welfare. The amendments have been shown to be necessary by actual experience in the preparation of town planning schemes and for the most part are the outcome of representations made to the Government from time to time by the local authorities themselves. Without these amendments it is clear that town planning must remain a dead-letter. Local authorities throughout the country commenced the preparation of their town planning schemes with enthusiasm, but very soon found themselves bdset with difficulties which could only be overcome by the amendment of the Act itself. The position was clearly stated by the Director of Town Planning in his address to the Municipal Conference last March and thoamendments contained in part two of the'Bill follow very closely the recommendations unanimously adopted by the conference. In addition to this, the Director of Town Planning has addressed over a hundred public meetings throughout the Dominion, and found everywhere the same measure of approval of the proposals now before the House. Under these circumstances I am entitled to believe that the Bill contains nothing of a contentious nature—that in view of the urgency and importance of the amendments, no difficulties will be placed in the way of its passage through the House during the present session. The Act as will be seen is divided into two parts. Part one contains miscellaneous amendments to the principal Act, while part two makes provision for the preparation of regional schemes, using the term “Regional” in accordance with its accepted international usage rather than the very restricted and misleading meaning given to it in the principal Act. Apart from the consequential amendments due to the change in terminology, part one contains three amendments of some importance. Extension of Time Limit. Firstly, the extension of the time limit within which schemes must be submitted for the approval of the Board. As the Act reads at present the last date for the submission of schemes is January , the Ist., 1930. This is extended to January Ist, 1932. It is now evident that under the most favourable circumstances it would have been impossible for the majority of the local authorities to have complied with this provision. The second amendment makes a change in one of the compensation provisions contained in Section 29 of the principal Act. The third amendment extends the scope of Section 34 of the principal Act to include both rural and urban authorities, which I am sure was the original intention of the legislature, for it is absurd to suppose that the developments in areas immediately outside the boundaries of a borough are less in need of control than within the boroughs themselves. “The scope of the section has been widened also by the addition of the words — ‘would be in contravention of the scheme if it had been completed and approved.’ The object of this is to give a local authority the power to require the observance of certain provisions which it is intended to include it its town planning scheme, although these might not strictly fall within the scope of the term ‘recognized and approved principles of town planning.’ It may be desired for instance to limit the height or density of buildings in some particular locality, but such restrictions could only be justified if it could be shown that they form part of a comprehensive scheme. In other words, the principles of town planning require that such restrictions shall form part of a comprehensive scheme and apply uniformly to all property in that locality. The amendment would be found to be' in the interests of the property owners. At first sight, the provisions of part two of the act appear to embody some new principle, but this is not so, for Section 28 of the principal Act says, that, any two or more local authorities having jurisdiction over adjoining districts, and bound or competent by virtue of this Act to prepare, a town planning or regional planning scheme — (using the word ‘regional’ in the sense of rural) may, with the approval of the board, resolve to unite for the purpose of preparing a combined scheme for the whole or for a defined portion of the total area within their several jurisdictions, but it is this provision, or rather the machinery by which effect was to be given to it, which has proved in practice to be inoperative, largely for technical and financial sons.Essential Schemes. “It is very obvious that these combined schemes are essential, for in the majority of cases the local governmental areas in this country bear very little relation to the social and economic interests involved. Take the case of a borough surrounded by rapidly growing suburbs in the country areas —suburbs which in the ordinary course of events would sooner or later be amalgamated with the borough. It would be of very little use for that borough to prepare a scheme for its own area without considering its relationship to the surrounding district. As the Act stands, these combined schemes have the same force as a statutory scheme for an individual borough, and would therefore place statutory financial obligations upon the constituent authorities. In other words, it means that while each authority, on joining a combined committee, is relieved of its statutory' obligation to prepare a separate scheme, it would be under a statutory obligation to give effect to those provisions which related to its own area after the combined schemes had been approved, and since the financial obligations involved in the carrying out of a scheme cannot be ascertained until after that scheme has been approved, it means that each combining authority would delegate to a committee the power to involve it in an unknown liability. Some Difficulties Remedied. “It may be also, that with the limitation imposed on the number of members of a combined committee, some local authorities may not even be able to secure representation; This is what actually happened in the Auckland Metropolitan Area, which embraces 26 local authorities. These 26 local authorities readily admit the necessity for preparing a combined scheme, but not one of them would agree to delegate its spending powers to a joint committee unless it could secure representation on the basis of its ratable value of population. Exactly the same difficulties have been experienced in other parts of the British Empire, and the same procedure is now being followed which it is proposed j

should be adopted here, namely, to permit of the preparation of combined schemes over an area which can be regarded as a social or economic unit without placing any of the local authorities under a statutory obligation to carry out the provisions of the scheme. This obviates the necessity for a local authority to secure, representation in proportion to its population- or ratable value. Another defect of Section 28 is, that the formation of these combined committees is left to voluntary action on the part of the local authorities themselves, and there can be no guarantee that any such committee would have the power to deal with the whole of . the land within the economic unit. This was proved to be the ease in Christchurch where the defection of two out of the nine authorities in the region refused to co-operate and thereby wrecked the whole scheme. Another serious difficulty is that no provision is made for either determining or allocating the cost of preparing these combined schemes. Further Defects Corrected. “Another defect of Section 28 is, that it makes no provision for the co-operation of any interests outside of the local authorities themselves, whereas a scheme to be really effective should represent a united policy of physical development, agreed to, not only by the local authorities, but by those Government departments, statutory bodies, business and social organizations exercising functions within the region. The amendments now made remedy these defects. Although these regional schemes do not place any statutory obligations upon the' local authorities concerned, it must not be assumed that there is no power by which they can be carried into effect. Their primary object is to serve as a guide to the local authorities in the preparation of their statutory town planning schemes, and if you will refer to Section 23 of the Principal Act, you will note that a borough council may, on its own initiative, or shall if so required by the Town Planning Board, elaborate, enlarge, modify or alter any details of its scheme. It follows, therefore, that when an approved regional planning scheme is in existence, the Town Planning Board would insist on the incorporation of its provisions in the separate statutory town planning schemes, unless' a local authority could show some very good reason why this should not be done.”