Auckland Council has now completed a case-by-case review of resource consents identified as possibly affected by the Special Character Areas Overlay issue. This review involved a thorough assessment of each potentially impacted consent to determine if it was in fact affected.
Today, the council announced that a total of 335 resource consents have been confirmed as affected and has begun re-contacting these consent holders to advise them that their resource consent is verified as affected. We are also contacting other people whose consents were identified as potentially impacted, to tell them that their resource consent is not affected and no further action is needed.
The councils General Manager – Resource Consents, Ian Smallburn, says that as a result of undertaking a comprehensive review of every potentially affected consent, his team is confident that many impacted resource consents will be relatively straightforward to resolve.
“While each affected consent is different and does need to be considered on a case-by-case basis, our staff have identified more than half of the affected resource consents will not be difficult to resolve. Once a new resource consent is granted, a LIM notice will be removed from the property file,” explained Mr Smallburn.
The council also continues to work closely with consent holders whose issues are not as straightforward to resolve.
So far, the council has received 58 new resource consent applications from affected consent holders and has issued 17 new resource consents. This means that of the 335 affected consents, 318 are still to be resolved.
Mr Smallburn expects to receive increasing numbers of new resource consent applications from affected consent holders in the upcoming weeks.
“To date, our resources have been focussed on completing a detailed and comprehensive review of each potentially impacted consent to confirm those that are actually affected. Now that our review is complete, we will be reallocating resources to the processing of new consents. We expect to do this at a faster rate from now on,” says Mr Smallburn.
Special Character resource consents - September update
Published 13 September 2018
Auckland Council continues to prioritise working with resource consent holders affected by the Special Character Areas Overlay resource consent issue.
The issue arose from inconsistent wording of the rules in the Auckland Unitary Plan for resource consents for properties zoned ‘Single House’ and where a ‘Special Character Areas Residential Overlay’ applies.
Between 1 December 2016 and 19 December 2017, the council’s practice was consistent with external legal advice it had obtained to determine the correct interpretation of the rules. This practice was to apply only the Special Character Overlay rules, the related underlying Single House zone rules were not considered.
The council also asked the Environment Court to clarify the rules. The court decided that both the Special Character Areas Overlay rules and the underlying zoning controls must apply.
Two weeks ago, the council began contacting people granted a resource consent under the Special Character Overlay rules within the affected time frame to let them know of a potential issue with their consent. All resource consent holders that the council has identified as being potentially affected have been contacted.
The council is undertaking a thorough analysis of all Special Character Overlay resource consents and is working with affected resource consent holders to address their specific consenting issues.
Where required, this includes working with consent holders on how to amend their design to reduce any amenity impacts of their proposed development on neighbouring properties, and facilitating mediation between consent holders and neighbours if needed.
We strongly encourage people who have been contacted by the council to get hold of us and let us know what stage they are at with implementing their consent.
For more information on the Special Character Areas Overlay issue visit OurAuckland.
