Richard Hills: Auckland Council Policy and Planning Committee Chair on the council taking action on flood-risk communities

Calm before the storm for Auckland's flood-risk communities as the council takes action. 

It'll buy more than 1200 high risk homes by the end of the year, at a cost of $352 million. 

A large chunk of the land will be retained for flood resilience and safer areas will be sold for development. 

Auckland Council Policy and Planning Committee Chair Richard Hills told Mike Hosking it's going to be a long road. 

He says people will find it hard seeing houses removed from the street they live on. 

The Council has also acknowledged the time it's taken to take action on flood risk areas. 

Hills says he hoped it would be a faster process. 

He told Hosking homeowners could apply to be categorised for most of last year, and then needed individual assessments. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Tour of time, of course, and the war a lot
to be thinking about in Europe at the moment, So
Catherine Field and France for us in a couple of
moments time meantime. Back here Auckland Council I have approved
the next steps for flood affected land. By the end
of this year, apparently more than twelve hundred high risk
climbs will have been purchased the bill of three hundred
and fifty two million dollars. Large amount of land is
going to be retained for flood resilience. Some safer areas
could be sold for development. The Auckland Council's Policy and

(00:23):
Planning Committee Chair Richard Hills is with us on this
Richard morning to you.

Speaker 2 (00:27):
Good morning mate.

Speaker 1 (00:28):
Now for the rest of the country not to bore
them witless. This comes out of the storm a couple
of years ago. Why is it taken so long to
get here?

Speaker 2 (00:35):
First of all, it took us quite a while to
negotiate with the last government to get a deal, and
then it was we had most of last year that
people could apply to be categorized, and then unfortunately every
single house needed an individual assessment to assess whether it
needed to be purchased a lot. So that's engineering flood.
You know. I think about three and a half thousand

(00:56):
people put themselves forward and we're going to end up
with about twelve hundred properties that are a risk to life.

Speaker 1 (01:04):
So would you argue you've done as well as you can?

Speaker 2 (01:08):
No, having I would have loved it to be faster.
But a lot of people also put themselves in quite late.
I mean, it's pretty hard for people to decide whether
they want to leave the home. They might have lived
in their whole lives or for a very long time,
and they're starting to see their neighbors being brought out
and thinking, okay, I'm going to put myself into. So

(01:29):
it has taken it some time, but we're hopefully moving
forward this year. A lot of people are happy that
they're able to purchase the house.

Speaker 1 (01:37):
When it comes to flood resilience, are you only looking
at the land that got whacked by the storm or
are you're thinking more broadly afield what could happen climatically
over the next dozen years or so and thinking, you know,
along those lines.

Speaker 2 (01:50):
Yeah, so we do do that anyway. So there are
some projects before the storms, such as in Northcote where
we removed a bunch of houses and removed the pipes
and roads and made sort of a river through Northcote,
which actually fared well during the floods. So we're doing
that in conjunction with this work. So there with twelve
hundred properties, we want to make them safe. We will

(02:11):
look to see if we can sell a big chunk
back to the market if we can make them safe.
So you've got a house on a slab at the
bottom of the section, you may say, you may say
we can build it on stilts at the top of
the section and sell it back to the market, but
a lot of it will be used for.

Speaker 1 (02:26):
You'll be trying to sell me something on stilts not still, you.

Speaker 2 (02:29):
Know, piles as opposed to sorry, not stilt.

Speaker 1 (02:32):
Yes, you're not in real estate retroduce. Stick to the council.
And what have you learned out of all of this?
In people's dealings? I mean I followed with a great
deal of interest out West Auckland. You know the communities
out there, and that we've lived here for it, you know,
the emotion around it and stuff like that. What have
you learned out of all.

Speaker 2 (02:48):
Oh, look, it's really hard and it's not like the
Hawks Bay as time where where you might be able
to see from a helicopter where the issues were. In Auckland,
you might have two houses the stuffed next to two
houses that are fine. So there are areas like Milford
where you've got one hundred and forty you know, big
two meters of water went through some of those host
people climbing on their roofs. I think a lot of

(03:09):
Auckland don't know what happened to the people who were
hit the hardest, so it's quite quite jarring for people.
So it's going to be a long row. People are
going to find it hard seeing houses removed from the
street they live on. But hopefully over time we'll be
able to work with the community better to understand where
flooding is and going forward, if we get the government

(03:29):
legislation changes, we'll be able to change our planning rules
to ensure less of this happens in the future.

Speaker 1 (03:34):
Good stuff. Richard appreciate it. Richard Hills as an Northland
City Council The Golden Visa I knew it was and
I'm so pleased it's been proved to be true. Was
a good idea. And not only is it a good idea.
It looks to be a smash hit. More on that
late nineteen two.

Speaker 2 (03:47):
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