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North Shore City Council has apologised to a Torbay couple after wiping an $11,272 bill for development levies on a house that has been lived in for a decade.
Joan and Colin Munro had fought an original council levy of $20,548 when the council granted subdivision consent for their property 15 months earlier.
Their lawyer, Sue Simons, said it was their second attempt to gain separate title for the house they had built behind their home in 1996 - after a costly delay in gaining building consent.
"The Munros are victims of systemic failure by the council to provide for a simple development," said Ms Simons. "What should have been a simple, straightforward process has ended up being a costly and regrettable exercise for them."
Ms Simons said a "series of spiralling events left them tens of thousands out of pocket".
The couple's first attempt at getting subdivision consent in 1999 was approved. But they were diverted by a row with the council to try to get a neighbour's retaining wall fixed.
Efforts on this over the years cost them $20,000, and they were unable to afford an assessed reserve contribution of $7382 to uplift the consent.
The council refused to review the fee and the consent lapsed in 2004.
Their next bid for consent in March 2006 ran hard up against the council's new development contributions regime, which aims to make subdivisions pay the costs of additional demand on council services.
The Munros complained in a letter to the council: "We were utterly stunned to find the new fees had increased considerably, and further, that a lot of conditions, not required for the original application, had also been added to it this time - bothmaking it again beyond our financial capacity.
"We feel it is incorrect of council to charge development levies for a building that has been inhabited for more than 10 years."
Pleas to the council for a review and cancellation of the $20,931 levy were denied.
Then last month, shortly before the Munros and their lawyer were to seek a review by a council subcommittee, council officers reassessed the charge to $11,271 plus GST.
This took into account a formula for crediting parks and reserves contributions based on the time of the development.
However, after hearing Ms Simons' submission and officers and council's legal advisers, the review subcommittee members agreed that because of the time difference of 10 years between the building of the house and the 2006 subdivision consent application, it was difficult to regard both applications as related to a single project.
"In this instance, given the particular set of circumstances, it was agreed that the subdivision consent did not generate a demand for development contributions, given the passage of time," says a record of the confidential meeting.
The levy was remitted and subcommittee chairman Councillor Grant Gillon apologised to the Munros on behalf of the council for the situation they had found themselves in and for the time it had taken to be resolved.
"I think a lot of people, when they deal with authorities like councils, don't get apologies, so I was pleased to do it," said Mr Gillon, a former MP, who was elected to the council last October.
He was sure the action would not create a precedent for other remission applications because each case had different circumstances.
