Mowbray helicopter decision opens the door in an area with few regulations - Julie Stout

The Westmere home that ex-All Black Ali Williams and Anna Mowbray want to rebuild with a helicopter pad. Photo / File

THE FACTS

• A Westmere home received approval for a helicopter landing pad, despite significant local opposition.
• The decision was based on a restricted discretionary application, focusing mainly on noise level compliance.
• The ruling sets a precedent, allowing helicopters in urban areas with minimal regulations and controls.

The granting of landing and take-off rights for a helicopter landing pad at a Westmere home this week certainly rocks one’s faith in the resource consent hearing process.

The application site sits right beside an important feeding and roosting area for wading birds, many endangered species, and a flat tidal area important not just to birds but to many residents. Plus, it is in a residential area in which 1300 out of 1400 submitters were clear in their objection to the intrusion of helicopters into their harbour space, and the Waitematā becoming used as a transport corridor, an aerial motorway.

Originally, the application was acknowledged as a request for consent for a non-complying activity but, as the legal winds of the hearing process blew, it shifted to being a restricted discretionary application. The reason given for this is that the use of helicopters as a means to access your home is not mentioned in the Auckland Unitary Plan.

The fact that, of the 611,895 dwellings in Auckland, 99.98% don’t require a helicopter is thus seen as a failing of the Unitary Plan, rather than a recognition that increased wealth and development of technology have moved faster than our planning legislation.

None of us is surprised by that, but should it mean that decisions are made that set a determining precedent rather than taking a cautionary path while legislation is determined through a due legal and planning consultative process? One couple’s wish to commute by helicopter from their house is hardly keeping the wheels of the nation’s industry turning and necessitates a very narrow interpretation of the Resource Management Act, hobbled by the Auckland Unitary Plan, which does not adequately control the adverse effects of helicopter flights in the city’s urban residential areas.

The hearing panel determined in its report that the “use of helicopters for property access is an activity inherently associated with residential land use … provided it can comply with applicable standards” – the only relevant standard being for noise levels aggregated over a seven-day assessment period. It was previously a 24-hour period.

Such a loose interpretation of the rules has already led to residents on Waiheke and Aotea/Great Barrier Island feeling under attack from above by helicopter noise during summer.

The problem with this latest ruling, as Urban Auckland sees it, is that determining helicopters to be a form of transport for residents opens the door to them being used in urban housing areas with very few regulations and controls attached, and the burden of proof for contravention and policing is put on beleaguered neighbours. Is this good planning law?

Under current legislation, the granting of a helicopter use resource consent is forever. It cannot be revoked, so this ruling sets a precedent, opening the door wide for other applicants. It flies in the face of Auckland Council’s staff planning report and the wishes of the local board, both of whom wanted the application refused.

Sydney and Melbourne have already been through this. They do not allow helicopters in urban residential areas, except where Fly Neighbourly Agreements have been worked out with residents.

Aerial transport, like AI and the internet, is a relatively recent intervention in our lives. In this case, it will affect more than just humans in how we use the amenities provided by our harbours. The infrequent singular event may be relatively inconsequential, but the singular setting a precedent means the cumulative will affect us all. How do we optimise the balance between amenity and utility as our city intensifies?

We would have hoped that the hearing panel had recognised this wider responsibility and had taken a status quo response until the upcoming review of the Unitary Plan was completed.