A review panel was established in response to public disquiet about the performance and accountability of Council Controlled Organisations (CCOs). The CCOs are Auckland Transport, Auckland Unlimited (formerly ATEED and Regional Facilities), Eke Panuku Development Auckland, and Watercare. The independent panel reported back in 2020 and all 64 recommendations were adopted.

This has now come down to an engagement plan with each of the 21 local boards, to promote better communication between the boards and each of the CCOs. This is intended to help CCOs have more regard to local boards’ plan outcomes, improve communications, and keep up to date with intended work programs.
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In return, the CCOs get a ‘no surprises’ agreement, where any local body concerns must be addressed through agreed single point of contact managers and advise if they are planning to speak to the media on a CCO related matter. This also means that local boards must direct questions about a CCO’s activities to either a local area manager or to the CCO’s elected member liaison so that consistent responses are given.
With the vast communications and PR resources available to Council and CCOs, this appears to be another move to tighten up on the flow of information and to control the narrative about council activity, even down to local board level.

All 21 local boards were requested to agree to and sign up to the engagement plan. Whau Local Board voted unanimously to agree and signed off on this at their July business meeting. 

New Lynn has very little built heritage left standing. Currently, there are a few houses that have a planning overlay of historical heritage. Now a developer wants to build on one of these sites, treating it much like any other.

The circa early 1920s brick bungalow at 12 Hutchinson Ave is under threat from a redevelopment of the section to accommodate four new townhouses. Despite Council’s advice at a preliminary meeting that the scale of the development was inappropriate for a heritage site and recommending only two to three townhouses, the developer has gone ahead with an application to build four townhouses behind the existing house.

12 Hutchinson is one of six dwellings surviving from Hetana Hamlet. This was an early council attempt to subdivide the land and attract workers away from the rather squalid conditions of the central city in 1902. All six remaining houses and their entire sections have a historical heritage overlay. However, this has not deterred the applicant from seeking to subdivide the 1012m2 site into five lots.

One positive is the developer’s willingness to do a proper conservation restoration of the exterior of the original house before starting work on the townhouses. A negative is moving the driveway, which involves removing part of the heritage-scheduled brick front wall.

Rebecca Fox, Team Leader, Built Heritage Implementation Team at Auckland Council, discussed the proposal. Her preliminary advice was as follows:

“The new townhouses impact not only the historic house but also neighbours, especially those who will lose sunlight from the non-complying buildings one metre from their northern boundary.
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“From a heritage perspective, this is too much development for the site. The new four-unit development overwhelms the heritage building and detracts from its heritage values. I would not be able to support it in its current form”.

Submissions to the notified resource closed in August, and a decision is pending.

Constable Sam Holland has been a Community Constable based in the local New Lynn community station for the last year and a half. His role is to be visible, accessible, and familiar to the community and to focus on problem-solving and crime prevention at a local level.

He is part of a local policing strategy that includes a three-person Community Policing Team – or in older language, a ‘beat team’ who do foot patrols in the New Lynn town centre. They also cover other local shopping centres such as Titirangi, Green Bay and Glen Eden.

For more intensive issues, the Area Prevention Unit (APU), based in Henderson, can intervene. This high visibility unit can work at a household level and be part of the solution where social issues are evident. The APU is a proactive policing unit who target problem hot spots crime and focus their work around prevention policing activity in West Auckland. The unit was re-established after a recess during the first Covid crisis.

Local people can also help with community safety. Māori and Pacific Wardens help with events and sports fixtures, as well as patrolling town centres.
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Community Patrol New Zealand (CPNZ) is another volunteer group active in parts of the Whau. They are trained to be observers who conduct mobile patrols of known risk areas. They report any issues to the police for further action. More volunteers are needed to make these patrols more frequent and effective. To find out more, go to www.cpnz.org.nz

Grace Nweke’s latest milestone on her meteoric rise was her first game as a Silver Fern. With a loss to England of 55-45, it was not the spectacular debut that many were hoping for. Grace came on in the second half, just as England’s Roses were ascending, playing a tight disciplined game. Simultaneously, the Silver Ferns had lost momentum and were becoming more disjointed. The passes to Grace were often too short or too deep, so she didn’t get as much ball as she could have done. Despite that, she got 16 goals out of 20 shots. That 80% rate reflected some nervousness at the step up to international competition. It is lower than her success rate in the ANZ Premiership which was 90% and 852 goals.

Grace and her twin brother were born in NZ. She is one of six children, including two sets of twins. Her Nigerian parents, Fortune and Chidinma, immigrated here, via South Korea. “My dad always tells me they were living in South Korea the year Helen Clark came for a visit. He saw pictures of New Zealand in the newspaper and thought ‘Wow, what a beautiful place to raise a family’,” Grace Nweke says. “Before they knew it, they were on a plane to New Zealand.”

Grace Got an Aspire Scholarship for years 9 & 10 for AGC Sunderland in Henderson. Other than that, she did all her education in the Whau. Starting at New Lynn Kindergarten she went on to New Lynn Primary School. Then it was onto Blockhouse Bay Intermediate, ACG Sunderland and finally Avondale College.
After making a start playing netball in Y4 at New Lynn Primary, Grace went on to make the top team at Blockhouse Bay Intermediate School. In Y8, she missed out on the top netball team. At Avondale College in year 11, she gave basketball a go. That didn’t work out so well when she played like it was netball, stopping and standing under the hoop to shoot. In year 12 she was in AvCol’s premier team, being coached by Racheal Rasmussen. Racheal was a NZ U21 world champion.

At only 16 years old and a student at Avondale, Grace was spotted by Helene Wilson at the national U17 tournament and later at the North Island School championship.  “I saw her holding and creating space for herself to catch the ball,” Wilson says. “And I could see she had a really long arm span, that she could jump, and catch the ball at the height of the hoop. “Those are things you can’t coach a player to do; she does them instinctively. I knew I could work with that and make her into a high-performance netball player.”

After consultation with her parents, teachers and coaches, Grace was invited to become a Mystics training partner. That is when she really came into the public eye. At 16, she was nervous on her first day with the Mystics. “I’ve always struggled coming into new team environments, not knowing anyone,” Grace says. “I was dropping all the balls and stepping. I couldn’t pass properly. I was second-guessing myself.”

Grace met her idol, Irene van Dyke, at a national development camp. “She’s gorgeous and so humble,” van Dyk said at the time. “She’s honestly like a sponge – everything you ask her to try, she gives 100 percent. She needs to stay grounded and do a lot of shooting so it becomes comfortable, and work on her range and movement in the circle. She has so much to learn about, but with her pure natural ability, she’s carving it up already. The sky is the limit for this chick!”

This year saw Grace dominate at the ANZ Premiership, helping propel the Mystics to the grand final win. She made 58 out of 62 shots. Then she got the rebound three of the four times she missed. Her coach, Helene Wilson says, “In the two and a half to three years that we've had her, to come from being someone who didn't feel like they belonged in this high-performance environment to where she was today, I just think that is a testament to her ability to learn, but also her maturity to have performance conversations with the girls.”
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Now Grace is with the Silver Ferns, we can look forward to her really finding her feet after the nervous start, and successfully growing into her role in the team. Her dad and family are very proud of her as she represents well the community that she grew up in.

Kiwi Property, the owner of LynnMall, has announced that it is moving ahead with a significant build-to-rent (BTR) development that will include 245 BTR apartments. As a result, there could potentially be 600 apartments on the New Lynn site.

More than half of Aucklanders over the age of 15 currently rent, with this number expected to rise to 60% by 2043. This new asset class has the potential to play an important role in helping address the growing demand for rental accommodation and alleviate New Zealand’s housing shortfall,” says Kiwi Property CEO, Clive Mackenzie.

The model offers residents the flexibility and convenience of renting, coupled with the security of
tenure typically associated with homeownership. Tenants will be able to keep pets as of right, hang pictures and have flexibility with the colour scheme.

The building will integrate ground floor retail, three commercial office levels and 19 floors of residential apartments. It links to the existing LynnMall retail centre and is within 50 meters of the New Lynn train station, being located on the corner of Totora Avenue and Memorial Drive. The development will be the tallest building in west Auckland and offer quality amenities, including a rooftop deck and leisure area, providing unparalleled views from the Waitematā to Manukau harbours.
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The development will include amenity spaces, concentrated activity zones, and organised events will create a vibrant community with a deep connection to place. 7–8 Homestar rating is targeted, delivering excellent sustainability performance.

Once more a seal pup has been seen visiting Blockhouse Bay. It was making itself at home in the doorway to the Boat Club for a while.

This is a common sight in winter as the seal mothers leave their pups ashore while fishing. It is also part of weaning before they give birth again.

DOC advise just to leave seal pups alone unless they are injured. They ask people to keep their distance and to keep dogs under control.

Photos: Simon Stuart, Levitate Photography

New Zealand’s largest ever wastewater infrastructure project, the Central Interceptor, has officially begun, with the launch of the Tunnel Boring Machine at Māngere.

Currently, in the event of heavy rain Auckland’s central wastewater network overflows to local waterways and the Waitematā Harbour at more than 100 locations, and to the north-eastern Manukau Harbour at 14 locations. Untreated wastewater results in increased harm to the environment, contaminated seafoods, transmitted diseases to water users, and creates unsuitable conditions for marine life.

The existing wastewater pipeline that passes under the Manukau Harbour was built in 1964 and is reaching the end of its operational lifespan.

The Central Interceptor is an integral part of Auckland Council’s long-term strategy to manage wastewater, and will provide a series of essential benefits such as drastically reducing wet-weather overflows, reducing risks to public health and the environment, and meeting the needs of a growing Auckland City.

“This project is a positive reflection of the work that Auckland Council puts into facilitating the continued growth of Auckland as a world-class city and experience for our citizens”, says Whau Ward Councillor Tracy Mulholland.
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More information regarding this project, as well as regular updates, can be found on Auckland Council’s website.

Our involvement in this process, as local board members, is that we can provide feedback on whether or not applications should be publicly notified, have limited notification, or are not notified at all. Notification means that other people have an opportunity to have their say on the resource consent application. However, under legislation many types of applications cannot be notified, so local boards are not invited to give feedback. I would like to emphasise that we are invited to give feedback, NOT make the decision around notification of an application.

Intensive development is occurring across the Whau and we, as local board members, understand that people need houses. We are concerned about the impact of this intensification on our infrastructure and our green spaces, which residents need for recreation. These are areas where local boards can play a part, either through advocacy or decision-making. So, we are unable to influence the resource consents allowing development, but we can work to mitigate its effects.  

There is a small, barren little plot of land on the corner of Miranda, Ruahine and Umbriel streets in Glenavon. A few years back the area was one of the early redevelopments of Kainga Ora (KO) land. In its current state, it is not really that useful for anything. The surface is too uneven for kids to enjoy informal sports.

About two years ago neighbours were talking with Shalema Wanden-Hannay (Community Waitakere) and Eva Wongchiu from the Glenavon Community Hub, saying that they would like to see the space be made more useable. A Hub board member, Tepano, had a vision of the land becoming like the heart of a village to the residents; a place where they could come together to socialise and to celebrate.

Because Glenavon Community Hub is working closely with KO, discussions on possible development continued. KO promised some money to help, and the Whau Local Board came up with some funds for art from their budget, but it was still not enough to get started.

The land is actually owned by KO, not Auckland Council, and it could be developed by KO into housing in the future, so council funding is not an option.

Then a breakthrough occurred when the Central Interceptor Project took over a site on Blockhouse Bay Road and removed the playground from that part of Miranda Reserve. Watercare wanted to temporarily install the playground equipment on the KO land and were told that actually, the local community, led by the Hub, had plans for that area and to talk to them. Fortunately, there was a group like the Hub to represent community voices.

Now that Watercare was onboard, work progressed to define exactly what the community wanted. A survey was conducted to gather ideas and a community day held at the park. They were asked what they wanted the park to feel like, giving a sense of community ownership.

There are big expectations for a small amount of land. Mainly people wanted some open space to remain so that they could gather for play, events, and socialising. Eventually a draft plan was drawn up based on feedback. The plan includes flowers and fruit trees around the perimeter, a bike/scooter track, a nature trail, a multipurpose concrete stage area that could be used for hoops, large balance beams, a portable BBQ for events, and artwork at one end. Four artists submitted concepts that were shown to the community, who chose the one that resonated with them most.

It has taken a long time and a lot of consultation to get this far. Now people are getting really excited about seeing it become a reality.
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The vision is also a community meeting place. For example, instead of the cost of going to a commercial venue, friends and neighbours could gather for a child’s birthday party. This space could be a model for other pocket parks around the city as housing intensifies and backyards disappear. Then having a great little park a short walk from home will be a huge asset.