Council green-lights new builds after anxious 15 month wait for Mangawhai Park landowners

BY JULIA WADE

21 Nov, 2022

After struggling for more than a year in limbo with building plans in hand and dreams of becoming Mangawhai locals slowly waning, landowners of a long-standing holiday park can now finally move on and in, due to a change of heart by council.

Since mid-2021, ten site owners at Moir Street’s Mangawhai Park who were preparing to move into their local patches, have had a long and anxious wait due to a Kaipara District Council (KDC) ‘re-classification of property’ directive. However, in late October, [just before this story was going to print] council changed their stance and have given a green light for the new builds, with conditions, much to the delight of the land owners.

Park goes private

A go-to destination for many holidaymakers since the 1980s, in recent years the Park has evolved from a licensed campground to a home for privately-owned cabins with a number occupied on a permanent basis. Due to this change in status, a dispute arose between KDC and park managers, EUO 71 MOIR Inc (EUO), who oversee the estate on behalf of registered owners. With lengthy discussions and even a chaired meeting unable to solve the impasse, the issue was possibly heading to the Environment Court.

EUO committee member, retired land surveyor/planner Tony Matthews, says the unfortunate situation began in June 2021 after council’s planning department decided the park’s campground category was non-complying.

“Many residents were residing in the park on a permanent basis and council informed EUO that we would have to apply for a new resource consent because the existing campground licence no longer applied. They then withdrew this consent without further consultation,” he says. “A number of new owners, who had already applied for building consents, found themselves blocked as council refused to permit the final ten buildings until a complying consent was in place. This action became an escalating cause of considerable financial hardship for the new owners and a significant source of uncertainty, distress, and frustration affecting their lives, plans and general well-being. Nobody in the park understood why this was even necessary.”

Stalemate stress

The 15 month stalemate left the ten Mangawhai Park landowners experiencing significant financial stress due to having to pay the mortgage and storage fees for their already-built cabins and tiny homes, as well as KDC rates and wastewater levies for a bare section on top of their current day-to-day expenses.

The waiting period has also taken an emotional and mental toll, with one 74-year-old woman saying her dream ‘of living out my retirement years in Mangawhai was shattered’, and had developed migraines, anxiety and sleeplessness, debilitating symptoms echoed by other impacted landowners. One young woman who suffers from serious health issues says, due to the housing crisis making affordable rentals hard to find, it was exciting to have ‘a small piece of land and a tiny house’ she could potentially call home.

“I felt heavily reliant on this working out as if it didn't, there is nothing else for me to fall back on. It got to the point where it is affecting people heavily, in a terrible and irreversible way… just want the council to put this nightmare to an end.”

Chequered history

Formerly known as Mangawhai Holiday Park, in 2007 new owners Mangawhai Park Ltd (MPL) were granted resource consent to operate as a campground with the right to construct and operate holiday cabins as well as sell individual sites, which the new owners were permitted to build cabins upon. MPL’s affiliate company, Mangawhai Management Ltd, went into liquidation in 2018 and the Park’s management rights were sold to EUO, the resident’s incorporated society. In late 2020, MPL also voluntarily declared bankruptcy and their holdings, including the caretaker's house and the last nine unoccupied sections, were put up for sale.

The three main points of difference between EUO and KDC were (1) Acceptance of existing use rights and the continuing validity of the park’s current consent; (2) Restrictions on building consents for new dwellings; (3) Existing settlement pattern in recognition of 68 sites, not just one.

“By 2021, council had granted building consents to establish some 82 percent of the sites available in the park and have continued to collect rates for each of the 68 titled areas,” says Tony Matthews. “Council then insisted that they recognise the Park as one site only and this has created a major incompatibility with the existing settlement pattern established through previous consents. In effect we were then asked to comply with rules designed for normal sized houses on normal sized building sites within which our built environment and any similar new buildings cannot possibly fit.”

He says the EUO committee appreciates council planners ‘have raised several issues for which assessment may be due’, and over the past year more than $50,000 has been spent on planning consultants and legal advisors in an attempt to clarify and satisfy KDC’s new consent demands.

Council lifts restrictions

EUO’s barrister also advised that as council had already issued building consents right through to 2021, to withhold the consents ‘is not supportable in law as our existing consent… was still being given effect and therefore a new consent was not required to allow new builds to proceed.’

“However, after 15 months of EUO asking them to do so, council have now agreed to lift restrictions on building consents and the new owners can proceed as planned,” says Matthews. “Further to this, following an early submission in November 2021 to authorise activities in Mangawhai Park to include the use of all cabins as dwellings which was withdrawn after disagreement on existing use rights, EUO have been working on the complex task of gathering consultants reports necessary to support an application for the land use consents. We trust that this will meet a recent condition set by council for releasing the new builds as we are now well on the track towards completion of this.”

Naturally landowners ‘are absolutely thrilled’ with the council change of stance one landowner says.

“We are very grateful that the council have taken a different view of the situation – one that we actually begged them to take over a year ago – and have finally agreed to grant building permission. It’s such a shame that so many people had to go through so much stress and hardship before we got there,” she says. “There is still a road to be travelled to get the permanent occupancy issue sorted however, and our sincere thanks to Tony and others from the Park who have given so much of their time and will continue to do so to sort out these issues with council.”

A popular holiday park since the 1980s, in recent years Mangawhai Park has evolved from a licensed campground to a home for privately-owned cabins with a number occupied on a permanent basis. PHOTO/JULIA WADE

“We are very grateful that the council have taken a different view of the situation… It’s such a shame that so many people had to go through so much stress and hardship before we got there.”

– Mangawhai Park resident