10 Dec 2015

Climate change property assessments may be revisited

1:29 pm on 10 December 2015

The Christchurch City Council has voted to take another look at a report classing 18,000 properties as vulnerable to sea level rise due to climate change.

In September, the government and the council decided to drop a change to planning rules that would have classed the properties as vulnerable.

Residents, worried about falling property values, were shocked soon after when they discovered the information would remain on their Land Information Memorandum (LIM) reports.

This had caused them a lot of stress, residents spokesperson Tim Sintes told the council before the vote.

"It's caused so much uncertainty in people's lives in the east," Mr Sintes said. "I get continual phone calls from people who are having consent problems, particularly in new builds on blank sections."

The council has now agreed to conduct a second peer review of the report that classed the properties as vulnerable in the first place.

This will be carried out by scientific experts, in consultation with residents.