Beach access set to be resolved

Wednesday, March 15, 2006 13:28

JONATHAN DOW

Public access to Ocean Beach may be resolved in August. A Maori Land Court judge has indicated he wants to sort out whether the existing road to the beach will become legal then.

If he does not make the existing road legal the Hastings District Council needs to find an alternative.

At the charette in October developers proposed a million dollar road to the beach.

But Hastings District Council strategic development manager Mark Clews said he understood this was not an option at the moment because the developer wanted to wait for the outcome of the charette process.

Paratene Te Huia, a beneficiary of land-owners Puke Puke Tangiora Estate, said they did not want to close the road to the public.

But the estate has only 2.5 hectares at Ocean Beach which they want to develop and the beneficiaries did not want to provide public access forever.

In the meantime the trustees of Waipuka Incorporation, which owns the 32 houses at Ocean Beach, can only get to their land over the Puke Puke Tangiora Estate land. Mr Yule said the council had been negotiating access for 10 years. Trustees of the Puke Puke Tangiora Estate had approved legal access across their land but this had to go before the Maori Land Court after some beneficiaries of the estate objected, he said.