The Hutt’s Voluntary Heritage Group (VHG) urges residents to present to an independent panel judging if the Hutt Council can proceed with plans to freeze development on over 300 Petone households.

The Panel will meet in April to assess whether Hutt City’s Plan Change 56 complies with the Government’s “intensification” law. Hutt City plans to allow intensification everywhere except ten proposed “heritage areas” – blocks in multiple streets in which every house will be forced to limit development, even many renovations, because a small number of them have retained their original appearance.

VHG Convenor Phil Barry says submitters should present in person to be sure the Panel has properly heard and understood their submission.

“The most powerful testimony is from people directly affected by absurd rules, and these heritage areas are as absurd as rules get.

“The legislation allows exclusions only where there are significant heritage values to protect, but the Council proposals are based on claims of a special character of a collection of streets.

“The panel is independent. The Council will be under pressure to make its case to the judges. This is the best chance homeowners will get to speak their mind, and it’s the last chance they’ve got.”

Barry says few people doubt there is character to Petone, but fewer can put their finger on what it is.

“The Council’s experts make unsubstantiated waffly claims about the area. They spectacularly fail to justify that there is significant heritage in these collections of streets.

“The streets are mostly made up of homes which are clearly new builds, significantly changed, or beyond recovery.”

Barry says it is critical for homeowners to give real-world appraisals to outweigh the unrealistic influence of Council-paid ‘experts’.

“Experts want to impose rules that will prevent families future-proofing their homes without obtaining a complex and expensive resource consent – granted at the Council’s discretion.

“Other people will get to profit from building more homes on their property, but homes in the heritage areas next door, even tired old shacks, won’t be allowed to build up or out at all under the new heritage area rules,” says Phil Barry.

Previous work by the VHG had discovered that the average reduction in value of heritage-listed homes was 10 to 30%. This research applied to suburbs where nothing else changed. The intensification plans could magnify the loss by increasing the monetary advantages available to those not in heritage areas. The extent of value loss could also depend on resulting access to sunlight, and increased insurance premiums, for those properties forced to succumb to surrounding six-storey buildings.

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