Commissioner Alan Withy, top centre, presides over an independent hearing at Waipā District Council last
week with submitters to the left, and applicants in the foreground.
Ōhaupō landowner Nick Jennings broke down and was unable to continue with his evidence at an independent hearing last week heard to consider a retrospective application to construct vertical and horizontal kiwifruit shelters around his house.
The hearing, before commissioner Alan Withy took a day and ended with Withy making an onsite visit to the Jennings property in Parallel Road.
There he would have seen a house surrounded on three sides by shelter cloth and shelterbelts.
Withy will now consider his findings which have been made tougher by closing submissions from the applicant’s legal counsel Joan Forret, received earlier this week.
The independent commissioner is unlikely to release his findings for another week.
The applicant, Kiwifruit Investments Ltd, has built the shading to protect kiwifruit plants next to the Jennings home.
In addition, the company has established shelterbelts closer to the Jennings property than the council’s District Plan allows.
The resource consent applications were lodged retrospectively after director Parmvir Singh Bains said he had no idea consent was needed from the council.
Jennings became emotional as he read out what impact being surrounded on three sides by six-metre-high shade cloth and shelterbelts was having on his family. He said he felt like he was in prison.
He had no argument with kiwifruit being planted and only took issue with the shades and the shelterbelt which he said had ruined their quality of living.
His barrister Phil Lang read the evidence instead. Earlier Lang argued there had been no expert evidence provided by the applicant or the council on landscape, visual and rural character effects.
“There is no expert opinion backing up assessments of whether the effects of the shelterbelt are less than minor, minor, more than minor.
“The reporting planner is not an expert in landscape, visual or rural character effects, and is therefore able to make the required assessments in the absence of supporting expert evidence, which is normally provided by the applicant in these situations. The applicant has chosen to conduct its case entirely without expert evidence, other than the planner’s evidence,” Lang said.
Jennings employed a landscape architect who provided the only expert opinion, he said.
Joanna Soanes, a principal landscape architect at Boffa Miskell Ltd, argued Kiwifruit Investments proposal to include minimal setbacks, structure heights, large site coverage and shelterbelt planting had the potential to create moderate to high degree effects “equating to a more than minor adverse visual effect.”
She has a Bachelor of Landscape Architecture with Honours from Lincoln University.
After the hearing, Dr Forret provided closing submissions and said her client proposed alternative options and altered plans to mitigate Jennings’ concerns.
