Chch City Council gets Aidanfield stormwater resource consent

Christchurch City Council has been granted a five-year resource consent to discharge stormwater from the Aidanfield subdivision and its Bishop’s Basin detention pond in the south-west of the city.

The Council has been discharging water in this way, so today’s decision from commissioners acting for the regional council, Environment Canterbury (ECan), means there will be no discernible change for residents in the area.

Parties involved in the resource consent process have three weeks to lodge an appeal. If there are no appeals, the decision means building applications from Aidanfield landowners, a small number of which have been on hold since the introduction of the Building Act on 1 April, can now progress. This will mainly affect landowners with properties in Stage 4 of the Aidanfield development.

The City Council would like to hear from any landowners who have held back their building applications.

Council staff alerted landowners earlier this year that changes to the Act meant they needed to have building applications approved before 1 April if they wanted to avoid being delayed due to the outstanding stormwater consent. That advice triggered a rush of applications and staff worked many hours overtime in March to ensure the more than 40 consents were processed, approved and picked up before the cut-off date.

Since 1 April the Council has heard from only six owners asking when they might expect to get permission to build. That is not to say only six property owners’ plans have been held up, but that is all that have contacted the Council.

ENDS

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