KEY POINTS:
A senior West Coast anaesthetist at the centre of a housing wrangle is living in a camping ground while she waits for the dispute to be resolved.
Judy Forbes is a permanent part-time anaesthetist at Grey Base Hospital. She bought an old weatherboard bach in the coastal town of Rapahoe, north of Greymouth, in 1999 to use when working on the West Coast.
Last year, huge seas shifted boulders from the sea wall in front of her house and eroded the land to within a metre of her property.
In January, Dr Forbes moved her home 10m back to the rear of her property - it is sitting on wooden blocks and is uninhabitable - hoping that she could get retrospective consents.
But Grey District Council refused to issue consents until it had approved an engineer's design for a replacement sea wall, so Christchurch-based Dr Forbes is staying at the Rapahoe camping ground when on duty in Greymouth.
"I have been offered housing from everyone, from the telephonist at the hospital to the cleaner, to the surgeons. The patients - I can't believe it - they say, 'There's a bed at my place'. People are so gorgeous on the Coast."
Dr Forbes said once an engineer designed a sea wall there was no guarantee the council would accept it and issue consents for her house.
Grey District Council environmental services manager Sue Harkness said Dr Forbes should have maintained the sea wall. "She instead, unfortunately, shifted the house without resource or building consent."
- NZPA
