Wilson Parking accuses council of charging ‘excessive’ consent fees
Monday, 18 December 2023
Wilson Parking is accusing the Christchurch City Council of charging “excessive and unreasonable” fees for processing consents for three city car parks.
New Zealand’s largest parking provider is seeking a $12,080 reduction in its bill from the council.
The two organisations have failed to reach agreement on the issue and will now battle it out in front of commissioner David Caldwell at a hearing on Wednesday.
Wilson Parking, which operates more than 200 car parks across New Zealand, also made objections to costs involving three other car parks, but those have been resolved.
In the hearing documents, Wilson Parking’s planners Town Planning Group said three planners, a team leader and principal adviser spent 80 hours on an application to operate a temporary car park for eight years on residential land on the corner of Montreal St and Worcester Blvd.
The site previously held a 1940s home that was demolished.
Wilson Parking ended up withdrawing the application in May after a council planner recommended the consent be declined.
However, the council had already spent $18,119 on the application.
In its objection to the fees, Wilson Parking said the processing planner was inexperienced.
It was her first hearing process and the amount of time charged was “excessive”.
It also said the site was located 100m or a 1 minute walk from the council offices, yet 1.22 hours was spent on a site visit.
Wilson Parking was seeking a 32-hour reduction in planner time, worth $6064. It said it considered this to be a fair and reasonable amount of time to process the application.
In response, the council’s planning team leader, Jo McAfee, said she did not consider a reduction in charges was warranted because the time spent was similar to other applications.
She said 68.5 hours had already been deducted from the bill to take into account training and coaching.
McAfee said it was not uncommon for more than one site inspection and for an assessment of the entire block to consider issues like commercial creep into residential zones.
The other disputed application relates to two car parks side by side at 29 and 35 Cambridge Tce.
Both sites have operated as temporary car parks since 2012 and 2013 respectively.
Wilson Parking said 84 hours of processing planning time was excessive and it believed that handling from multiple council planning staff had resulted in time deficiencies and increased costs.
It was seeking a reduction of 35.42 hours of work, worth $6016. The total costs were $36,319, but the council applied a discount after not meeting the statutory timeframes, so the total bill was $18,437.
In response, McAfee said an error in the invoicing process had been identified for the tree expert and administration costs.
She has recommended the council remit $1592 worth of charges to take account for those errors, however, she believed the additional charges were warranted.
The commissioner would make the final decision following Wednesday’s hearing.
In 2020, the council wrote to operators of almost 100 temporary car parks on vacant sites, warning them they would need a resource consent to remain open.
As part of the consents they also had to spruce up the sites. Motorists had complained about the state of many car parks for some years. Some had uneven and potholed surfaces, poor lighting, and obstacles remaining from demolished structures.