Commentary: A comment that often seems to be made in relation to public engagement with the Christchurch City Council is “what’s the point?”. Here are three examples illustrating the benefits of getting involved and giving feedback.
Continue reading “Does the Council ever listen? Why yes, yes it does.”Month: September 2020
Simon writes in The Spinoff: “The Christchurch regeneration project that is slowly sinking”
I’ve fielded a few questions from Papanui residents as to when we might expect to see housing development in the Cranford Basin. The background to this is the 2017 approval of the Cranford Regeneration Plan, which saw a part of the area rezoned from rural to residential.
I did some research on this, including reading many of the documents available on the Council’s website, talking to landowners and asking questions of both the Christchurch City Council and also the Greater Christchurch Partnership.
The Spinoff was kind enough to publish the resulting article – click through to read:
Question for readers
What are your thoughts on the Cranford Regeneration Plan and the prospect of some of the privately-owned land in the Cranford Basin being developed for housing?
Plan change proposed for visitor accommodation
Update: This morning the Council’s Urban Development and Transport Committee approved the public notification of a proposed change to the District Plan. The proposal relates to the use of residential dwellings for visitor accommodation (e.g. Airbnb and HomeAway/Bookabach-type activities), and has hit the headlines recently, with some individuals and groups arguing the changes are unnecessary or go too far, and others that they don’t go far enough. What’s being proposed, and what are the next steps in the process?
In February this year I attended a Papanui drop-in session as part of the Council’s consultation on potential changes to the Christchurch District Plan around managing home-share accommodation. What I found interested at the time was that of the estimated 1600-plus listings in Christchurch on the likes of Air BnB etc for unhosted accommodation (where the owner did not live on site), only a ‘handful’ were compliant with the existing District Plan requirements, specifically the need for a Resource Consent for a property to be used in that way.
Continue reading “Plan change proposed for visitor accommodation”
Simon Britten 