Positive progress on helicopter consents

Positive progress was made this week on the issue of helicopter consents in the Queenstown Lakes District.

Helicopter operators in the area are involved in a project to consent landings at individual sites in the district. With hundreds of consents pending, the council last month resolved to hold a round-table discussion with operators to find a way forward which would avoid unnecessary cost and bureaucracy.

“On Wednesday night the council and Lakes Environmental representatives met with a 50-strong group representative of helicopter companies, rural landowners, the Department of Conservation and Land Information NZ to talk about progress with consents for helicopter operations,” QLDC chief executive Duncan Field said.

The consenting project had been embarked on to enable commercial helicopter operations to comply with the District Plan

To date 396 applications for helicopter operations had been received with 95 consents issued to applicants.

“I want to thank all those who attended the meeting for their contribution to the discussions and their commitment to find a suitable means to avoid unnecessary cost and bureaucracy,” Mr Field said.

The shared experience to date had shown all parties where the tough issues were.

“We worked through several of these this week. More importantly the meeting formulated a concept for moving on which the council and Lakes Environmental representatives will now develop into a detailed proposal,” he said.

Although most consents had been able to be issued on a non-notified basis some would still involve a hearing before an independent commissioner.

“Arthur’s Point is an example of that and a hearing will still proceed,” Mr Field said.

Another issue discussed at the meeting was that helicopter activities must also be assessed for DOC concessions.

“The key conclusion was that we need to use more of the knowledge and expertise of organisations like DOC and we need to integrate our processes” Mr Field said.

The Department of Conservation has indicated it aims to complete processing renewal of concessions within about six months from when applications are received.