Homeowner can’t buy bit of paper road on property, in case it’s needed one day

A woman who tried to buy a piece of her front yard from the Marlborough District Council has had the request denied in case a road one day needs to be built there.

The Alfred St homeowner put a request in to council in September 2021 to buy the 76m2 area of “unformed road” that sits within her property. The homeowner has a “license to occupy” the land, which is planted with trees and has been fenced inside the property for the last 40 years.

But when the council received the request, it realised there was no policy to draw on to provide a consistent approach to “urban road stopping requests”.

Road stopping is the process of buying a “paper road”. The council’s website said a paper road is one that is legally established and recorded in survey plans, but hasn’t necessarily been “pegged out”.

So while it was legally designated for roading, it was not formed into “actual roadway”, the website said.

Prompted by the homeowner’s request, the council decided to prepare an Urban Road Stopping Policy. Under the policy, when council considered a road stopping request they must ensure the asset is protected against future demands and requirements, such as intersection upgrades, road widening and off-road cycle paths.

The policy said a road could no longer be “stopped” if it was considered that the road was needed now, or in the future.

Under the road stopping request, the Alfred St homeowner said they were looking to demolish the existing house on the property to better facilitate the positioning of a new home.

They said purchasing the land they currently occupied anyway was the best outcome, and neighbouring properties on the same street had purchased their berms in the past to allow building close to the footpath.

Their request said there would be little change to the road front appearance, except some tree removal and a new fence.

Meanwhile, the original report prepared by the council in 2021, off the back of the request, before the decision was made to develop a road stopping policy, said the unformed portion of the road had never actually been used as a road, and there was seen to be no future need for it as a road.

Chorus, Marlborough Lines and Marlborough Roads had no issue with the proposal at the time. The council’s parks and open spaces, rivers section and sustainable transport manager also did not oppose the proposal.

And the NZ Walking and Access Commission noted the road reserve had been amalgamated into other properties along that section of Alfred St. As a result, the opportunity for use of the reserve as a possible cycleway or road widening had been lost.

But when the proposal came back to council in January, a report prepared for the council’s assets and services committee recommended the request be denied because it was not consistent with the goals of the Urban Road Stopping Policy.

The report, prepared by council’s assets and services manager Richard Coningham, said denying the request allowed for any potential future road widening or improvements needed on Alfred St.

Coningham told councillors the recommendation to deny the request came after they received advice from Marlborough Roads senior transport planner.

Deputy mayor and committee chairperson David Croad said they had to look at the future – and protect the narrowness of the roads, the parking and any potential cycleways.

“Whilst I sympathise with the applicant, we do have to apply that policy and think about the bigger picture for the region as a whole.”

The committee moved to deny the request. This was subject to full council approval on March 2.

The owner of the property, who did not want to be named, said while the decision was a disappointing result, it was something they would just “have to live with”.

“We were hopeful things would go our way, but sometimes you can’t change things,” she said.

Public Interest Journalism funded through NZ on Air.