Developer takes Environmental Protection Authority to High Court
A Queenstown developer’s lodged a High Court appeal over a decision to reject its Ladies Miles subdivision.
Last week, a panel convened by the Environmental Protection Authority (EPA) rejected Glenpanel Development Ltd’s application to build up to 384 residential units in its Flint’s Park subdivision north of the Ladies Mile highway.
The panel, which considered the application under Covid recovery fast-track legislation, rejected Flint’s Park due to its ‘‘adverse landscape and visual effects’’, plus concerns over creating more traffic on Ladies Mile.
Glenpanel director Mark Tylden says its appeal raises 15 grounds where it believes the EPA panel erred.
‘‘We intend to seek for the appeal to be urgently heard and determined by the High Court, and are looking forward to the High Court’s guidance so the application can be considered fairly.’’
Tylden calls the panel’s decision ‘‘a real slap in the face for the people in Queenstown seeking to get on the property ladder’’.
Beside Flint’s Park, Glenpanel Development’s also applying for fast-track consent for an adjacent subdivision, Flint’s Park West, which would have up to 315 residential units.
Ladies Mile decision labelled ‘”mind-boggling”
On the other side of Flint’s Park, the Stalker family’s Maryhill Ltd is applying for fast-track consent for the Glenpanel subdivision, which would have up to 748 residential units.
Assuming the latter two applications are also rejected, Tylden says the panel’s ‘‘silly decision has jeopardised 1400 houses where people can get on the property ladder’’.
‘‘It’s mind-boggling the commissioner or the panel chair would come up with such a poor decision’’.
Tylden believes the panel’s taken ‘‘a very narrow focus’’, and ignored the Queenstown council’s proposed district plan and spatial plan.
‘‘Key substantive grounds of appeal include that the panel was wrong to exclude, from its con sideration, key policies under the ‘national policy statement for urban development’, which are intended to ensure the delivery of housing into urban environments — and the site
being specifically identified as part of the ‘Queenstown-Lakes urban environment’ in the proposed district plan.
‘‘An example of a procedural error is the panel’s failure to consider declining the application in part, such as some of the elements on Slope Hill [an ‘outstanding natural feature’], or to give the applicant the opportunity to amend its proposal accordingly.
‘‘This was very unfair, and is in stark contrast to how the Lakeview panel [considering Queenstown’s Lakeview proposal] has approached its decision-making, as it gave the applicant there such a chance.’’
As for the panel’s concerns over traffic congestion, which Transport Minister Michael Wood also raised, Tylden says ‘‘the effects of up to the
first 180 dwellings are no more than minor’’.
‘‘And after that you’ve got roundabouts coming in, we were proposing underpasses, there’s going to be bus stops on the highway, there’s a bus lane, there’s a whole bunch of upgrades coming to support the whole [Ladies Mile] masterplan, so, again, it was a very poor and narrow interpretation by the panel.’’
