What sort of circus is this?
But wait, there's more. It gets worse.
Some of the property owners affected by this balls up will have to stop work on their properties.
Imagine that: Going through the time consuming and tedious process of leaping through hoops to get consent, you finally get it, you start the work, and then boom, you have to stop. Why? Because the council didn't read its own Unitary Plan properly.
And for the ultimate sting in the tail, the 430 property owners affected by this either reapply for their consents, or face potential legal action if they don't.
Wow. Way to go Auckland Council.
So you can reapply, you may or may not get resource consent granted again when and if you do, and if you don't reapply, you may face a legal challenge.
What does all this add up to? Money, lots of it. Oh and time. Lots of that too. And stress.
And inconvenience in fact, because if you're one of the people who have to stop your building, or make changes to what you've already built, in order to comply then you've got yourself a pile of inconvenience on top of your wasted money and your wasted time.
So a couple of questions: One, how on earth did the council manage to misinterpret its own rules? And two, where's the compensation for those affected?
Well apparently the council will pay for the new consents (and so it should) and it will "look at" compensation, in "some cases".
That part does not fill me with hope. The council needs to do better than that.
When it's your botch up, compensation should be a given, not just something you'll "look at".
