Chairperson’s report for Devonport Heritage

For the Annual General Meeting– 27/11/2023

This time last year we had completed our submissions on the intensification plan changes and were expecting that throughout this year we would be busy making our submissions to protect the Special Character areas of the city.

But nature intervened and after the terrible storms of the summer everything changed. Auckland Council saw that it couldn’t ignore the flooding and slips that had caused havoc in Auckland and continue with a government directive that would allow housing intensification everywhere in the city with no thought to planning.

The government agreed to delay Plan Change 78 for a year until a hazard investigation of the city could be completed.

It was a great relief and the right decision. But since then we have been in limbo. The threat to special housing areas like Devonport was/is still here and the fight to protect them may only be delayed.

The new government has said that implementing the MDRS will be optional for councils so we are assuming the ball is now in Auckland Council’s court. What will they do? Who knows?

The situation is still up in the air.

There would probably have to be a change in the legislation to enable the larger councils in the country to opt out of housing intensification and that is certainly what we hope Auckland Council does.

Afterall council strongly opposed the legislation saying it would be bad for Auckland and create poor and unplanned housing. They have always argued that the Auckland Unitary Plan is already doing the job of allowing intensification.

Apparently council has already spent about 3 million dollars on the plan change process and would have to spend a huge amount more to complete it.

They should opt out now and not waste any more money.

We certainly raised and spent a lot on preparing our defence of Devonport’s Special Character Area for Plan Change 78. We employed planners and architects to argue that the whole of Devonport needed to retain its overlay if it was to effectively protect the heritage value of the area.

We also made submissions on Plan Change 82 regarding scheduled buildings on the council’s Historic Heritage Places list.

We disagreed with the Council reducing some Devonport places from A status to Bs and made a detailed submission to the hearings committee in May.

To be on the A list council says places must be significant beyond the local area.

With the help of heritage architect Jackie Gillies and her expert advice, we set out to prove that the following places were of Auckland significance: 9 Mays Street; St Paul’s Church; Mays Building Victoria Road; the RSA’s Devonia Building.

We also fought to retain the house at 126 Vauxhall Road remain as a B scheduled building and the Anzac memorial on Lake Road remain an A scheduled place.

We have not yet had a decision from the Panel.

We had spent a great deal of time and resources on writing a submission for the Victoria Road shopping area to be made an Historic Heritage Area.

To our great surprize and disappointment the Hearings Panel decided this was out of scope and would not be included in Plan Change 82.

However the Auckland Council heritage unit said that they supported the proposal, and congratulated us on the quality of the submission.

They indicated the HHA proposal would be put through as a plan change and we are following up with them to get this underway.

Finance

We started the year with $14,240 and have paid out invoices for our heritage planner Graeme Burgess who spent many hours on the Special Character Area submission. So we end the year with a balance of $7362.97.

Committee

Our wonderful treasurer Carole Pedder stepped down this year because of work commitments and Bill Raynor retired from the committee this year. We thank them both for all their work.

Trish Deans will take over as treasurer. Avril Cowie continues as secretary and Trish Deans and I will be co-chairs for the next year.

Bruce Grant, Bernice Beachman, Jan Dickens and Chris Coulson are on the committee. Mike Eaglesome continues to be our technical person responsible for the website and mailouts.

The Future

Most of our energy goes into our political work to retain the Special Character area protections that are so vital to ensure Devonport remains a special heritage area.

But this year we would like to get back to advocating for heritage buildings and celebrating Devonport’s historic places.

We hope to bring back our heritage nights on “the Streets Where We Live” where our members look at a particular street or area and do a deep dive into the history with old photos and information.

Watch this space.

Another campaign we are launching soon is to get something done to urgently address the maintenance of the Esplanade Hotel. We have written to the offshore owner complaining about the neglected state of this fine historic building and urged him to do some urgently needed maintenance.

Let’s see what happens.

Thanks To:

I want to pay a very special acknowledgement to Jeremy Salmond who died almost a year ago.

Jeremy was the country’s leading heritage architect and was a guiding light for our group.

He left a hugely important legacy for Devonport in the way of photos, reports and heritage assessments and his name will always resonate here.

We also want to thank heritage architects Jackie Gillies and Graeme Burgess, lawyer Warwick Goldsmith and planner Dave Serjeant for all the work they did on our submissions this year.

We could not have done it without them.

Thank you to all our supporters who value the work we do and urge us to keep going.

Margot McRae
Co Chairperson
Devonport Heritage

27 November 2023