A Tauranga iwi is pleased the Environment Court has quashed a consent order to subdivide a large block of land on an island off the coast of the city.
A United State's owned company, Blakely Pacific, gained a resource consent order from the local district council to build houses on land it owned at the northern end of the island.
It owns 1925 hectares of forestry land but it proposed to divide the land into 48 - 40 hectare blocks.
But, four hapu of Ngai Te Rangi who occupy Matakana filed their concerns including their cultural connection to that land to the court.
The tribe's Resource Management Unit manager Reon Tuanau says the court ruling shows the iwi had a strong case.
