‘Fair Deal For Those With Motorway Land’

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31107, 9 July 1966, Page 21

‘Fair Deal For Those With Motorway Land’

The District Commissioner of Works (Mr D. B. Dallas) has reassured people likely to be affected by the proposed northern motorway that they will get a fair and honest deal if they have to sell their homes. He emphasised yesterday that there would be no summary warning to people to get out of their homes to make way for the bulldozers. “Everyone concerned will get at least two years’ notice in which to decide how they will set up house and home elsewhere in a manner suitable to themselves,” he said. Mr Dallas said every householder required to move because of the motorway would be given a full explanation of what would happen and why. When the time came to sell their properties, those concerned would be entitled to seek what they thought was a fair price. Officers employed by the Ministry of Works were fully trained and experienced in land deals and would negotiate personally with those concerned. Mr Dallas said that in the thousands of deals between

the Ministry of Works and private landowners in the past only one in 500 had been taken to the Land Valuation Court. The others had been settled amicably. Special provision would be made for people, particularly the elderly, who would find disturbance from their homes onerous and unwelcome.

Mr Dallas also emphasised that the only portion of the motorway where the route had in any way been defined was in the Waimairi county. This route, somewhere within a belt of six chains, would affect 30 properties, most of them rural. Of these, seven involved houses. He said the Waimairi County Council would call a meeting of the ratepayers concerned at which officers of the Ministry of Works, the Regional Planning Authority and the council would explain the whole procedure. Looking at the closelysettled areas likely to be affected by the motorway, Mr Dallas repeated that the final route had still to be chosen and the same procedure would be followed by the Christchurch City Council when it came to dealing with property owners involved. Mr Dallas saw no reason why anyone should take action now to dispose of their properties. Nor should they consider it until they discovered from the competent authorities when their land was likely to be required.