The consequences of Fast Track for Residential Developments.
These are the Facts:
The sad reality of the Fast Track Approvals Act, through the new RMA legislation, is that it now has precedence over and above all existing and future council short and long term plans, as well as the Natural Policy Statement on Highly Productive Land (NPS-HPL).
The NPS-HPL was set up to protect all highly fertile soils by law (LUC Class 1, 2 and 3 soils). Regrettably this NPS-HPL document now seems destined for the bin..!!.
This means that the normal democratic planning and consolation procedures and processes that councils go through all the time to plan for growth, could well be a thing of the past.
Now let’s be clear, we are not against development and we are not against growth.
Growth is important — we all understand the need for growth and we understand the need for infrastructure.
However our aim is to fight this Fast Track Approvals Act that has created a loophole for developers to develop residential areas that are out of sequence to already planned residential growth. But this residential growth throughout NZ could be determined by greedy developers and an expert panel in Wellington…!
Is this the type of decision making we want to see in this country to grow our residential communities?
Is this the type of democratic society we expect and have fought so hard for?
As you all know, councils spend many years, months and weeks planning for future developments, all at the cost of the ratepayers, to design future growth for our individual regions.
That democratic system of “planned growth” is now likely to be severely diminished under the Fast Track Approvals Act and if we as New Zealanders let this reform roll over us, the government will think that what they’re doing to us is okay when in fact we all know that it is most definitely NOT OKAY and silence on this issue is also NOT OKAY.
As you can imagine and as a consequence, New Zealanders throughout NZ are up in arms about this and we, the Save the Plains Group, along with many communities and community groups all through NZ, have come together and united as one.
We call ourselves “Communities for Planned Growth” and to initiate change, we all must stand united against this wrong legislation.
We launched our nationwide campaign a few days ago in the Selwyn District and we now have a live nationwide petition set up which is moving ahead rapidly.
https://petitions.parliament.nz/02882853-f7c9-4697-e10e-08df096f7033?lang=en
Thank you for participating.
Please sign the petition - help fight against the Fast Tract Act.