Maitai group goes to Ombudsman
Campaigners unsatisfied with the response to their concerns about council consultation processes around development plans in a Nelson valley have lodged a complaint with the Ombudsman.
Save the Maitai has been campaigning against the proposed Maitahi-Bayview development of up to 550 houses in the Ka¯ ka¯ Valley and 150 houses in the Atawhai hills since July, and its petition has collected more than 10,000 signatures.
Earlier this year, the group alleged ‘‘serious flaws’’ in the Nelson City Council consultation process on whether to designate land in the Ka¯ ka¯ or Maitai valleys for residential development.
The council said at the time that it had followed a ‘‘robust public consultation process’’, but Save the Maitai remains unconvinced, and is going to the Ombudsman.
Spokesman Dr Aaron Stallard said the group believed the official complaint was necessary in the face of the council’s response so far. ‘‘It now is apparent that the council will not change unless it is forced to.’’
He said Save the Maitai hoped that the Ombudsman would make a decision about whether the process was adequate, and should it prove inadequate, for the council to revisit the decision to designate the land for residential development with appropriate public consultation.
‘‘The council concluded [in 2006] to not allow for future development in the Maitai Valley, and that was on their website until June or July last year. You would think that to overturn that stance, it would have to be publicly consulted, since it was public consultation that led to it,’’ Stallard said.
He said that although the council had consulted the public on the decision as part of the Future Development Strategy, the Maitai Valley was not specifically named, there was no clear map of the area in the consultation document itself, and the consultation received a fraction of the responses that the Urban Growth Strategy of 2006 did.
‘‘The council’s official line is that they followed a robust consultation process and took into account the views of the public, and they did – all four that responded, and four is not enough.’’
Nelson council group manager for environmental services Clare Barton said previously that the council was no longer bound by the decisions in the 2006 Urban Growth Strategy, as it has been replaced by the Future Development Strategy adopted in 2019.