Upper Clutha group: "QLDC shows contempt for legal process."

From the Upper Clutha Environmental Society:

"The Upper Clutha Environmental Society and the Queenstown Lakes District Council reached an agreement in May 2020 whereby the Council committed to carrying out a landscape study across the entire rural area of the Upper Clutha Basin in return for the Society discontinuing a High Court action. The landscape study will help to prevent over-development in rural areas of the Upper Clutha Basin.

Under the agreement the Upper Clutha Basin landscape study should have been completed long ago and included in Council’s landscape plan change that is to be publicly notified next week, but the Council has failed to carry out the Upper Clutha Basin study.

The Council, in failing to complete the study, shows contempt for the agreement with the Society and shows contempt for the legal process.

 The Council appears to believe that rural landscape in the Upper Clutha Basin deserves less protection than that in the Wakatipu Basin. Its actions will leave Upper Clutha rural landscapes subject to degradation from development.

It appears that the Council has blatantly, wilfully and deliberately acted in bad faith in not complying with the agreement. The agreement was not even mentioned in plan change documents presented to a recent full Council meeting despite the fact that it is central to its purpose.

The Society’s submission to the plan change will seek that it is re-notified in a manner that includes the promised Upper Clutha Basin landscape study.

The Society has reserved its right to take legal action under the terms of the agreement if the Council does not give effect to those terms."

Julian Haworth, President UCES.

Crux has approached the QLDC for comment.