Ali Williams and Anna Mowbray have approval for a helipad at their Westmere property, but the council has decided to fight it.
This is a transcript of Simon Wilson’s weekly newsletter Love this City – exploring the ideas and events, the reality and the potential of Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland.
Contrary to some reports, the Auckland Council vote this week on private helipads in residential areas did not “kick the issue to touch” or “support” Anna Mowbray and Ali Williams’ planned helipad in Westmere.
On the contrary, the council has resolved to ask the Environment Court for a declaration of whether such helipads are a “permitted activity” under its Unitary Plan. The independent hearing panel that allowed Mowbray and Williams’ plan to proceed said they were, but the council says they’re not.
The court should be able to decide this quickly. If it rules in the council’s favour, the couple will have to halt their plans.
But if it rules for the Mowbray-Williams project, the council will draft a plan change to make it “explicitly clear” private helipads in the suburbs are a “non-complying activity”. If adopted, that will make them extremely difficult to approve.
On Thursday, the council opted for this “non-complying” route, instead of full prohibition as proposed by councillors Mike Lee and Kerrin Leoni.
Lee believes he was “ambushed” and the vote was a “stitch-up”, which will achieve little. But his colleagues voted against him, 15-7.
They had several reasons for doing this and they all boil down to the same thing: they believe Lee’s approach was doomed to fail but their approach could succeed. I’ll be analysing this in full next week, but briefly:
The council does not have the power simply to ban something on the spot. There’s a legal process to follow and it usually takes about two years, perhaps double that if there are appeals.
Some councillors said it was misleading for anyone to claim a vote this week would achieve that ban right now, or that it would stop Mowbray and Williams.
Also, some councillors believe there are parts of some suburbs where a private helipad might be permitted. Definitely not in Westmere, they were completely united on that. But remote Hillsborough cliffs above the Manukau Harbour and remote parts of Howick were both mentioned.
More significantly, councillors know the RMA Reform Minister Chris Bishop has instructed councils not to make any new plan changes because he has the whole act under review. They believe he will not allow a plan change to ban private helipads outright, but he might allow an exemption to make them non-complying.
There’s also a cost issue: a prohibition plan change could cost the council $1.5 million.
Councillor Josephine Bartley had a question for one of the council officials in the meeting: “Is it fair to say that it’s a $1.5m risk for something we already know is not likely? That we won’t win?”
“Yes, that’s fair,” said planning manager Phill Reid.
Councillors voted for the option they thought had the best chance of succeeding, and against the option they thought was, in effect, full of sound and fury, but signified nothing.
But it’s election time and several councillors are staking out their positions.
The Government is proposing to amend the National Policy Statement for Highly Productive Land (NPS-HPL) to remove the protections on “class 3 soils” that prevent their “inappropriate land use and development”. It will mean more city in the countryside.
RMA Reform Minister Chris Bishop argues these soils are not as valuable as is commonly thought and there will still be adequate protection for the soils that are genuinely valuable for crops and other agricultural land uses.
The NPS was introduced by the Labour Government in 2022; public consultation on the proposed changes closes this Sunday and a decision will follow soon. Soil experts have been making a last-gasp appeal for a rethink.
“The proposal is poorly considered and, if it goes through, would be an irreversible blunder of inter-generational scale, for multiple reasons,” says David Lowe, an emeritus professor of earth sciences at the University of Waikato.
“Future generations ... are being robbed of the potential productivity of versatile soils by people with a vested interest. The Luxon-led coalition Government has an ethical, moral and legal obligation to provide for future as well as current generations.”
NZ Society of Soil Science president Pierre Roudier says class 3 soil “represents the backbone of New Zealand’s food and fibre production and high-value exports”. It makes up two-thirds of the land currently protected under the NPS-HPL and supports a wide range of primary production, ranging from dairy and arable farming to viticulture and horticulture.
“Contrary to popular myth,” says Lowe, “New Zealand does not have large areas of highly productive soils.” Class 1 soils make up only 0.7% of productive soils and class 2 another 4.5%.
“The high-value soils of the Pukekohe-Bombay area have been facing ‘death by a thousand cuts’ over the past few decades under housing pressure,” he says. The area includes only 3.8% of New Zealand’s total horticultural land but it produces 26% by value of our vegetables.
Already in Auckland and Waikato, Lowe says, around 33% of the best land has been lost to urban expansion and the process is accelerating. He wants the proposed NPS changes abandoned.
Roudier isn’t so categoric. “Research shows that the most pressing issue on HPL is residential lifestyle development, significantly more so than edge-of-city expansion,” he says. Lifestyle blocks, not new subdivisions.
“This type of development breaks up productive farmland into smaller, disconnected parcels, which not only makes the land harder to farm efficiently but also introduces new pressures because of ‘reverse sensitivity’ (when new residents in rural areas object to normal farming activities, leading to restrictions on farms).”
People move to the country, then complain about the country (the same thing happens in central cities).
Bishop doesn’t necessarily intend to remove protections on all class 3 land. The regulatory impact statement on his proposals outlines four policy options, with complete removal being one of them.
Roudier supports a “more balanced option” that would allow councils to enable urban growth on class 3 land but protect it from lifestyle blocks.
“This targeted approach would support housing goals near urban areas,” he says, “without opening the door to uncontrolled sprawl across the wider countryside”.
Quality soils are a long time in the making. Typically, says Lowe, the timespan is 10,000 to 20,000 years. Some take 50,000 years or even longer: the elite soils of Pukekohe have taken several hundred thousand years to develop. Once gone, they’re really gone.
Auckland Transport wants to extend the bus lane hours on Dominion Rd and the business association is not happy. They may have Mayor Wayne Brown to contend with.
Brown has identified road efficiency as one of his key transport expectations. That means doing everything possible to allow traffic on the city’s arterials to flow smoothly. “Smart” traffic lights that give buses priority and recognise and respond to traffic build-ups. The removal of car parks that block peak-time traffic. The use of “dynamic” centre lanes, which change direction according to the morning and evening demand.
On Dominion Rd, which is narrower than most arterials, the key is to keep those bus lanes moving.
AT, supported by the Albert-Eden Local Board, isn’t proposing anything drastic, like 24-hour bus lanes. All it wants to do is have the peak times start at 3pm instead of 4pm. One hour earlier, which recognises the build-up of school traffic.
The Dominion Rd Business Association wants this “immediately cancelled”. It says the move is “a premature and economically damaging decision that threatens the livelihood of local businesses”.
The bus lanes opened in 2015 and have been instrumental in preventing congestion from creating complete gridlock on the street. Four years earlier, AT predicted that extending the hours would not be necessary until 2041. But in 2011, AT did not reckon with the extent of population or vehicle build-up of the past 25 years.
Gary Holmes, manager of the association, says: “We are utterly dismayed by Auckland Transport’s short-sighted proposal. The 2011 report clearly indicated that extending these hours to 3pm was a decades-away prospect, based on future demand. We do not believe the current traffic numbers in 2025 warrant it happening a decade and a half earlier than originally suggested.”
Halfway down Dominion Rd, people stuck in traffic may beg to differ.
Two things about making bus priority lanes more efficient: it works, and it’s one of the cheapest things the council can do to improve traffic flows. There are still many more car parks for shoppers and retail staff in the streets all around that area.
The council has an ongoing programme to “deliver better value”, which means finding ways to cut spending. It’s run by the Revenue, Expenditure and Value Committee, chaired by Deputy Mayor Desley Simpson, and adheres to 10 “better value project principles” set out by the Mayor.
After the committee’s latest meeting, Simpson reports: “We have halted several projects to reassess costs, which has seen several repriced considerably lower. This includes the Paremuka Dam culverts in Henderson, where the council retendering the project’s contract reduced the construction cost from $3.4 million to $1.9m – saving $1.4m from the focus on value for money.”
Staff have also stopped work on two other projects, Milford Marina and Long Bay footbridges, “to enable costs to be reassessed and delivered lower”.
Project manager Mark Townshend says: “We want all staff consistently applying the principles to their work, so we see every ratepayer dollar used to deliver greater value across our projects.”
Townshend says they do around 25 “health checks” in parks and community facilities each month, to see if the better value principles are being applied well. “Supplier performance workshops are also under way, which enables us to partner with our suppliers to provide better value projects for our communities.”
The mayor says the principles have saved $43.2m to date, which equates to not raising rates by 1.8%.
Dog Lovers of Monte Cecilia, which says it represents more than 500 dog owners and allies, has gained an interim order from the High Court preventing the Puketāpapa Local Board from enforcing its on-leash policy. A full judicial review is to follow.
Monte Cecilia Park is a very beautiful park between Three Kings and Hillsborough, with a large bowl in the middle that can’t be used for sports, formal or informal, and has been for many years an off-leash area for dogs.
The local board vote revealed a clear political divide. Community & Residents members on the right voted to remove the off-leash status; City Vision members on the left wanted it preserved. C&R has a one-vote majority, but City Vision has 88% of public submissions, a 1000-signature petition and the advice of council staff on its side.
The board’s decision “unfairly penalises responsible dog owners and undermines the wellbeing of both dogs and the wider community”, the Dog Lovers group said. “We are committed to ensuring that Monte Cecilia Park remains a safe and welcoming shared space for all Aucklanders.”
Board member Jon Turner, who is now a City Vision candidate for a ward seat on the governing body of council, says: “Communities & Residents members ran on a platform of listening to the community, yet they have twice disregarded overwhelming public sentiment and clear staff advice.”
C&R, for its part, is understood to be concerned about the views of some of the residents in a nearby retirement village.
Next month, the Environment Court will hear an appeal against the council’s decision in March to block a private plan change allowing land development in Warkworth.
The plan change is sought by the company Arvida, which wants to build a 198-unit retirement village on the edge of town. The council wasn’t opposed to the village but objected to Arvida wanting 140ha to be rezoned.
Arvida owns 55 of those 140ha. It plans to build on 22 of them and sell the remaining 33.
That, as Mayor Wayne Brown said in March, casts Arvida as a land banker: it had bought a larger site than it needed and with the rezoning in place would be able to sell parts of it for a substantial profit.
“Why don’t they just build the retirement village?” Brown said.
The court hearing comes after talks broke down between the company and the council.
Arvida says it wants the whole site rezoned to allow “a more co-ordinated, master-planned approach to the land”, which would “address the growing and future demand for retirement housing in the area”.
Arvida chief executive Jeremy Nicoll describes the process as “frustrating”. The company believes the council was wrong to block the plan-change request, in part because that prevented “a fair public hearing”.
“The plan change area adjoins the existing Warkworth urban area, is well connected to Warkworth’s many amenities and will integrate with existing and planned infrastructure,” he says.
“This appeal is necessary because due process must be followed when it comes to making important decisions about New Zealand’s urgent housing needs.”
In March, Brown made his position clear: the council is empowered to make these decisions, and it would continue to do what it considered right, even under threat of legal action.
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