Black side netting waiting to be added to the kiwifruit structures on the eastern boundary less than eight metres from the Jennings’ boundary. Photo: Supplied.
An ongoing dispute between an Ōhaupō lifestyler and a kiwifruit grower has escalated with the grower adding vertical black screens to the year-old six metre high wooden piles in Parallel Road despite claims it is against the Resource Management Act.
The News understands Waipā District Council has issued abatement notices but Kiwifruit Investments Ltd, owned by Parmvir Bains of Cambridge, is forging ahead to protect kiwifruit buds from birds and frosts.
Wayne Allan
Council Regulatory and Growth group manager Wayne Allan told The News council was aware of the issue and enforcement staff viewed the works last week.
“Council is now seeking urgent legal and planning advice and we will determine any next steps as soon as we receive that advice,” Allan said.
But Nick Jennings, who with his family owns a house on Parallel Road and is surrounded on three boundaries by the wooden structures and kiwifruit netting, is furious at the council’s response.
He first contacted them last Wednesday (August 30) saying the vertical black netting was going up less than 10 metres from his boundary when the District Plan says it should be more than 25m away.
Nick Jennings
Bains told The News he had a resource consent which was subject to appeal.
The work he was doing was a permitted activity under the District Plan, he said.
“We are here, we’re not doing anything which is illegal.”
Kiwifruit Investments Ltd applied for a retrospective resource consent last year to establish vertical and horizontal artificial kiwifruit shelters on three sides of the Jennings’ property.
The resource consent application went to an independent hearing in February before commissioner Alan Withy who granted the consent with conditions.
Bains told the hearing “I had no idea resource consent was needed” when he started building the structures early last year. He had kiwifruit orchards in the Bay of Plenty which did not need resource consents for overhead shelters.
Jennings appealed the decision to the Environment Court saying Withy used a flawed understanding of regulations.
Despite recent mediation, the case is still heading to the court next year. In the interim, The News understands Bains is not permitted to add to the existing structures.
Jennings’ lawyer Phil Lang contacted the council eight days ago telling Consent teams leader Quentin Budd the grower was installing internal partitions to unconsented structures.
“There should be no additions to the building which is already enormously in excess of the site coverage without consent,” Lang told Budd two days later.
“Their work should be stopped, and the unconsented additions removed so they can seek resource consent.”
Jennings said the work continued as soon as council staff left on Friday and reconvened on Monday.
“I am extremely disappointed with the council’s lack of urgency on this matter considering that the whole development should not be in place.
“It is an absolute disgrace and the circumstances that they are putting in a retrospective resource consent for a development the size of a dozen football fields, and they (the council) don’t think it’s urgent.”
Work was continuing earlier this week when The News went to press.
See: Kiwifruit rules under review
See: Kiwifruit decision ‘flawed’
See: Kiwifruit decision to be appealed
See: Landowners see red: ‘I’ll be surrounded …. I’ll be in prison.’
See: Build and be Damned
