KEY POINTS:
Heritage experts have lifted demolition controls on thousands of character houses in Auckland City without knowing the age of the buildings.
Tony Barnes, a heritage architect hired by Auckland City Council to do a "fine-grained analysis" of the heritage zone, said he was not given specific details on the age of each house.
Mr Barnes and a senior council planner, Katherine Ellis, surveyed about 7600 houses to decide which pre-1940 houses should be removed from demolition controls in affluent, leafy suburbs such as Remuera, Epsom, Parnell, Herne Bay, Mt Albert, St Heliers and Kohimarama.
They chose to lift demolition controls from 4128 houses, but the council was unable to say how many of these were pre-1940.
Mr Barnes said his experience as a heritage architect made him "fairly good" at picking the age of houses, but could not be sure of the age of houses on the cusp of 1940 without researching records. Some research had been done for houses on the cusp.
Planning lawyer Richard Brabant said it would be very difficult to carry out the review without knowing the age of the buildings.
Mr Brabant, who has applied to the Environment Court to join the legal fight over the demolition controls, said the bigger issue was the "garden suburb" criteria used by the council to change new rules for protecting character suburbs.
Council heritage manager George Farrant said he worked with Mr Barnes, defining and creating the new rules in 2005.
But Mr Farrant, the council's most senior heritage officer, said he had had no involvement in subsequent events to do with settling the appeal with three Remuera lawyers who are opposed to the rules and have lodged an appeal in the Environment Court.
Mr Farrant said the issue was about streetscape character, not heritage protection, and he was too busy to work on the issue.
Asked about the proposed compromise to lift heritage protection on thousands of houses to settle the legal row, Mr Farrant said he had his own ideas but did not want to go public.
"It would put me in clear opposition to other people in the organisation," he said.
City planning group manager Penny Pirrit acknowledged the council had not got the maps showing which houses were in and out of the demolition controls 100 per cent right.
The maps had gone to the lawyers - Derek Nolan, Brian Latimour and Tim Burcher - other parties to the court action and 13,000 households for feedback.
Penny Pirrit said criteria for lifting demolition controls was not about single houses, but a 60 per cent street character test, or cluster of three character buildings in a street.
"We are not talking about heritage buildings here, we are talking about buildings that demonstrate character and whether or not the road from the streetscape demonstrates more than 60 per cent of that character is retained in the buildings," she said.
Asked if she cared about preserving pre-1940 homes in the Residential 2 zone, Penny Pirrit said: "The council's position is there needs to be demolition protection controls placed on certain buildings in the Residential 2 zone that exhibit that particular characteristic for which the zone was set up."
In April, the council's top planner, John Duthie, told the city development committee that "many, if not most streets with a variety of pre- and post-1940 buildings will stay in the Residential 2 zone" following the survey.
