One of the problems with large organisations, including city councils, is they inevitably treat people as numbers. This applies not just to the public, but also to their own staff. A typical example is when the chief executive, usually an accountant or lawyer, has an engineering project that s/he doesn’t understand. The solution is to hire a bunch of engineers. S/he doesn’t know whether they are good engineers or bad engineers, so the only metric is the number of engineers. More engineers are better. Better engineers don’t matter. The same thing applies to other professions.
One of the problems with the Resource Management Act is the way councils have hired planners to apply it. The chief executive hires a number of planners. When there are problems, the solution is to hire more planners. There is no understanding of what planners actually do.
Rural and coastal councils have a lot of responsibility for environmental issues, but the main focus of planning in the city councils is building design and function. I keep striking planners with environmental qualifications doing the work of town planners in the cities. The chief executive is playing the numbers game but is creating more problems instead of solving them. This says a lot about the competency level of the chief executive.
The latest example is an immigrant environmental planner demanding that I redesign a house to have the living rooms and outdoor areas on the south side of the house because it is better town planning, something he is not qualified in.
It is not better.
In the southern hemisphere, the south side of buildings get no sun in the winter. It is the cold and damp side. The building code has calculations to reduce the number of windows on the south side. Maybe in his hot country, minimising sun is a good thing, but designing for the sun by orienting the house to the north where possible is a fundamental consideration of architecture in New Zealand. It is also recognised by proper town planners. The council has design guides recommending it, and until recently, has had rules requiring it.
The planning manager was reminded of this by email, but has not replied. Meanwhile, the immigrant planner should find out about New Zealand law, because currently, he appears to be blackmailing my client by refusing to issue the consent. It may be standard practice back in his country, but it is not acceptable here.
The problem is, the chief executive will continue to accept it because he only cares about the numbers. So to him, I point out that the Planning Unit had costs of $4.2m (operating expenses + council overheads) on an income of $2.6m. That’s a 60% loss. Those numbers are really bad.
This is why planning staff are desperate to drive up charges by making consents unnecessarily difficult. This is why people are complaining. The solution is not more planners. The solution is to get rid of the bad planners.
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