Event bureaucracy “unacceptable”

By James Rolfe, Rodney Local Board, Auckland Council

The planning process never seems to end; just as the Annual Plan and feedback into the Spatial Plan discussion document are over, we are into Local Board Plans. By now everyone should have received an information sheet on the draft Rodney Local Board Plan in their letterbox. This plan has been drafted from ideas contained in planning documents from Rodney District Council and input gathered from our communities in a number of engagement meetings through April. The feedback we got from these sessions was overwhelmingly a desire to see improved transport and more and better community facilities in our area. The Draft Plan is available from the Council website, and hard copies will be available at the open days that are being held throughout Rodney. Submitting on this Plan is vital for what you want to see happen (or not happen) in Rodney in the future. Submissions close August 8.

Something that is becoming increasingly clear is the unnecessary number of hoops community groups are expected to jump through in order to hold events. Applying for permits, preparing health and safety plans, and of course the ever popular, not to mention criminally expensive, traffic management plan. When Council staff are queried as to why the process should have to be so onerous, we are told that, alas, they are only enforcing rules that are not of their own making. There are anecdotal accounts of community events all over Auckland that do not happen due to this sort of heavy-handed regulation. Either the organiser cannot get funding for implementing traffic management, or the sheer scale of organising such a rigmarole becomes too daunting for what are usually volunteer groups.

This situation is unacceptable. We should be encouraging and facilitating as many community events as possible.  People who take time out of their lives to organise them should be lauded for their efforts, not deluged with forms, bureaucracy, and obstruction. The situation is emblematic of many people’s desire to have everyone protected from every eventuality, no matter how unlikely it is to occur. Perhaps I am being naive, but is it too much to ask to allow commonsense to prevail? How hard can it be?

Published July 2011