No permit but seawall can remain

An illegal seawall protecting two Hawke’s Bay properties is allowed to stand after a council gives up an eight-year fight to have it removed or fixed.

Mark Lawrence built the wall to protect his family’s Haumoana property, and his neighbour’s, in 2009. He built it without obtaining a permit or a resource consent and has always insisted he had only maintained an existing wall on the site that had collapsed.

After a long legal wrangle with the Hastings District Council he was slapped with a $3000 fine for breaching the Building Act and in 2012 the council gave him until March 2014 to repair the 40-metrelong wall or tear it down.

That deadline was later extended to May this year. His failure to comply could have seen Lawrence fined up to $200,000 and a further $20,000 for each day the wall was non-compliant. On Thursday the council told him the wall could stay as it was and no further enforcement action would be taken.

John O’shaughnessy, council group manager of planning and regulatory, said the council had considered a number of issues ‘‘including the directions of Crown Law which include that council must consider whether there is public good in pursuing prosecution and whether the matter can be resolved with or without prosecution’’.

The wall posed no threat to the public ‘‘and that forcing it to be removed would put the property behind the wall at serious risk of erosion (including the potential that the house would be inundated) . . . there is no public interest in pursuing the matter’’, he said. Council officers would continue to inspect the wall to ensure it posed no threat to public safety. If it did pose a threat, the council would take action.