Prestons Road plan change application considered

The Christchurch City Council’s Regulatory and Planning Committee today resolved to recommend to the Council that an application for a private plan change to allow for the creation of a suburban development in the vicinity of Prestons Road be rejected.

Prestons Road Ltd had lodged a plan change request to have 205 hectares of land between Lower Styx Road and Mairehau Road to the east of Marshlands Road rezoned from Rural to Living G.

The options available in response to the application were: Accept the application as a private application and publicly notify it for submission and hearing at the cost of the applicant; adopt the change as the Council’s own change and accept the responsibility and costs of processing it; reject the application; process it as a resource consent application.

The recommendation to reject the application was based on the grounds that the applicant had declined to provide information requested and that the change was not in accordance with sound resource management practice and was inconsistent with Part 5 of the Resource Management Act.

The committee’s unanimous recommendation will be considered by the Council at its meeting on 27 August.