Endless waves of red tape

Phil Parks with astack of council files. Photo / Herald on Sunday

After spending six years and nearly $190,000 battling bureaucracy, an Auckland surf club is broke - and still without a new clubhouse.

The Karekare Surf Life Saving Club wants to replace its 40-year-old clubhouse with a new three-storey building with bunk rooms, a first-aid room, a watchtower and space to store lifeboats.

But the club has spent all its money - $188,000 to date - in a never-ending battle with the Auckland Regional Council (ARC) and the Waitakere City Council. Six years later the club still does not have resource consent for the $1.2 million project.

Project manager and club life member Phil Parks said the club first approached the ARC about the project in 2004.

"We thought we would be using our new clubhouse this summer but it has taken us since 2006 to get the council to accept our application," he said.

All the club's money had been spent on reports on planting and landscape management, construction plans and vegetation, visual, landscape, geotechnical, wastewater, stormwater and archaeology assessments.

The ARC and the council had waived some fees, Parks said.

"But there are a lot of reports they made us get that they haven't used, like a landscape plan that cost us $30,000. We are broke. We are a voluntary organisation and we can't keep funding these reports."

The club had raised the money through fundraising events and most of the 180 members donated their own money to the fund.

The existing clubhouse, built in 1960, was falling into disrepair and was not large enough to house the rescue boats, Parks said.

The club had its first victory last week when it was finally granted a 20-year licence by the ARC to occupy park land.

It would launch another fundraising drive to raise the $1.2 million needed to build the clubhouse once consents were in place, Parks said.

Waitakere City Mayor and surf club member Bob Harvey sympathised with the club.

"They have had to pay a huge amount of money they don't have to save lives on the beach," he said.

Gaining resource consents to build on a "highly sensitive iconic beach" was time-consuming and expensive.

ARC parks chairwoman Sandra Coney said the council had waived fees and contributed towards the writing of reports.

"We need to know what the environmental and landscape effects will be on a highly sensitive area," she said.

ARC general manager of parks Mace Ward said the council had contributed $49,100 to the club for its application.

"We are looking forward to them having a functional space and being there for another 50 to 100 years," he said.