Councils Holding the Country to Ransom

[Perry]

Council Declines Its Own Application
Andrea O'Neil
24/07/2013

Porirua Little Theatre cannot be demolished, Porirua City Council has been
told by its own staff two months after the council applied to pull down the
Titahi Bay theatre. Last week the council halted its resource consent ap-
plication after advice from its own regulatory team that the consent would
undoubtedly fail owing to the building's heritage values.

Left hand - meet right hand.

[Wayne]

Council Declines Its Own Application
Andrea O'Neil
24/07/2013


Left hand - meet right hand.

at least they show no favour.

[motivated]

Yeah and the ratepayer pays twice for bs

[speights boy]

Yeah and the ratepayer pays twice for bs

So, you would prefer the council not to go through the same process as any other owner ?
Someone just pops their head over the cubicle and shouts "approve this will ya Bob"?
No formal process at all ?

[Wayne]

So, you would prefer the council not to go through the same process as any other owner ?
Someone just pops their head over the cubicle and shouts "approve this will ya Bob"?
No formal process at all ?

Exactly - it shows the chinese walls are working. In fact I expect that they are harder on internal requests to be sure they show no favour.

[Perry]

The tale needs reading carefully.
One dept. did not check with the
other so the process was going
to be inherently inefficient.

[Shalodge]

That's a bit hard Perry? This is how I read it....

Its a big outfit .. The department that manages their property decided it would be a good idea to pull down a particular building and so put in an application to do so. As part of that process the planners were consulted who advised that it was a heritage building (probably listed in the District plan) and they were unlikely to get consent and so the property dept canned that idea.

Result: Some reporter desperate to fill up a bit of space creates a dramatic story about council incompetence!!!

Hopefull outcome: It fell down on the reporter last sunday evening!

[Davo36]

I read it that way too actually.

[Perry]

That's a bit hard Perry? This is how I read it . . .

Yes - you may be right. But it's not uncommon
for the left hand/right hand syndrome to be
there, having an impact. But if it was just
some hack journo trying to fill a void, well . . .

There also could be some devil in the details . . .

Ms Bercic could not confirm how much the
council had already paid Cardno to consider
its resource consent application.

If it was zero, I imagine that would've been said.

[Davo36]

Auckland Council paying for skateboarding ambassadors now:

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10903371

[speights boy]

Coming soon, to a council near you ??

Revealed: Up to 6,000 'beds in sheds' set-up by rogue landlords are found by spy plane's thermal image camera

• Slough Borough Council spends £24,000 building up 3D map from air
• Authority uncovered 6,350 suspicious sheds and garages emitting heat
• Thousands could be living in converted outbuildings without permission
• Plane criss-crossed streets, picking up heat signals from outbuildings
• Analysis of images from night flight revealed suspicious dwellings
• www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2381451/Slough-spy-plane-detects-6-000-illegal-beds-sheds-thermal-imaging.html#comments

[Perry]

'Our primary concern is the health and wellbeing of people living in the outbuildings
and we will be doing whatever the law allows us to do to protect them and hold
rogue landlords to account, as well as enforcing regulations.'

Yeah, right.

Slough Council says people living in these illegal conversions use council
services but do not contribute any council tax towards them - and it has been
using the thermal project to try and stamp this out.

Now that sounds closer to the truth.

[Leftette]

Ever been to Slough? The heat sources they're seeing are people too drunk to get to the front door and/or face the Mrs so choose the shed instead.

[Davo36]

This is what happens when you can't build legally for love nor money.

If they let the owners whack up good quality minor dwellings in the back of their properties, or let them knock down the whole lot and put up a multi storey apartment building, then this sort of thing just wouldn't happen.

People don't want to live in a tin shed with no plumbing, but they will if there's nowhere else within 20 miles of their workplace.

[eri]

we don't need more land

just less chinese

according to labour

National's urgent legislation to open up more land for housing developments
will not make "a blind bit of difference" to Auckland house prices, Labour says.

http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/poli...p-for-Auckland

The bill would see consents for developments fast-tracked to within six months, rather than three years currently, for greenfield developments,

and three months, as opposed to one year, for brownfield developments. .

would you let labour

be your property manager or investment adviser?