Developers have been told they can continue with plans for a 500-section subdivision at Parua Bay but there is no guarantee the scheme will get resource consent.
Toll Holdings, which has already applied to the Whangarei District Council for resource consent for a 50-lot subdivision at Timperley Rd, Parua Bay, has
plans for a 517-lot subdivision nearby.
Last week the company asked the council for the two-year stand down period for applying for private changes to the district plan to be waived so it could continue looking at the development.
The land for the planned development, which would create 517 sections on a 110 hectare property between Whangarei Heads Rd and Pataua South Rd, would need to to have its zoning changed to allow such a scheme.
Under the Whangarei District Plan, which came into operation in May this year, the council can accept private plan changes. However, the Resource Management Act states that a local authority may reject the request for a private plan change on the grounds that the District Plan has been operative for less than two years.
While the full plan change documentation is not yet ready to be presented to the council, Toll Holdings asked, and was granted, that council waive the two-year stand down period to enable it to proceed with the plan change process.
In allowing the waiver, the council said there was no guarantee that the development would eventually get consent, or that the plan change application would not get turned down on any of the other four grounds it can be refused on.
Whangarei Heads ward councillor Robin Lieffering was opposed to granting the waiver, saying council and the Parua Bay community had already expended time on working out a structure plan for the area. "It's jumping ahead of what this council has told those people (at Parua Bay) we would do," she said.
