The Wellington Company has issued an open invitation to visit Shelly Bay between 29th January and 15th February to review its proposed plans for the development and have a say on its proposal.

We understand that you took the time to complete our Overarching Plan survey and we thank you for this we are checking to see if you have heard about this important opportunity to make your views known.

Why it's important to speak up now?

The Wellington Company's Mr Cassels said in the Stuff article promoting the development (https://www.stuff.co.nz/dominion-post/news/wellington/119084536/public-given--glimpse-into-wellingtons-shelly-bay-development-plans): that we won't build it if people don't like it, we will ask them if they like it, if they really really don't like it we won't build it, I'm so confident that they will like it that we will build it.

It has been reported that concerns about Shelly Bay are held by a vocal minority and that the proposal has broad community support, particularly in the Eastern suburbs. Mr Cassels has said: I think most people have identified that Shelly Bay is not a strong issue for Wellingtonians - transport is. Shelly Bay is a big issue for Peter Jackson but not a lot of other people.

Now is the time to speak up.

Recap: What has happened since 2017

In 2017, WCC (narrowly) agreed to support the development despite very strong and broad community concern in the submissions. WCC unanimously agreed at the time to do more work on Shelly Bay Road and to undertake an Independent Review of its decisions and processes.

Since 2017 a lot has happened:

• the Court of Appeal overturned the Resource Consent because the Council had made significant errors of law in processing and granting it,

• many conflicting and confusing facts have come out about the involvement of Mana Whenua in the development,

• WCC committed to revisiting its 2017 decision to support the development, and

• Shelly Bay became a key issue in the WCC election in October 2019.

However, no progress has been made on the WCC Independent Review or the work required to make Shelly Bay Road safe for cyclists and pedestrians.

A new resource consent was granted by the Independent Commissioners appointed to consider the resource consent under the Special Housing legislation. Enterprise Miramar and the community were again excluded from this resource consent process and there was no open testing of expert evidence (Enterprise Miramar presented expert traffic evidence to WCC that raised genuine safety and congestion concerns which were not answered by the WCC expert and was with-held from the Commissioners). Regrettably, this further resource consent may also end up in Court.

Conclusion

WCC is yet to make its decision on whether to support the development. So in addition to visiting Shelly Bay between 29th January and 15th February to have a say on the proposal - please contact your Mayor and Councillors and tell them what you think about Shelly Bay on councillors@wcc.govt.nz

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