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Throughout New Zealand, right now, various district councils are busy developing new rules to restrict all subdivision of our better quality rural land.
While I agree that all sizeable parcels of our best soil types should be preserved for future farming, it is too late to turn many smaller holdings back into large scale farms. Therefore these proposed rules should not be applied to holdings of less than 20-30ha.
My partner and I own one such smallholding (16ha) and were happy with this until we learned of the proposed new rules. I know of many other lifestyle block owners who are unhappy with the proposed rules and I would like the rest of you see it from our point of view.
Firstly, in my case, we are of a low income family and have worked hard over many years to buy our lifestyle block. We come from farming backgrounds and longed to live the rural life again.
We deliberately bought a bigger block with the intention of subdividing it when we retire.
This will give our siblings the opportunity to live here and maybe one or two others, who will be able to enjoy country life.
It would also give me and my partner some financial freedom in our twilight years to travel or treat medical conditions. Is this too much to ask?
I estimate the proposed change will cost us personally a lot of money. I cashed in our life insurances
and used this money and all our savings to buy this place 12 years ago, telling my partner we had no worries as the land would look after us in the future.
We are gutted. Our son who always wanted to build a house here is gutted. My sister who wished to live here is also gutted. All we can do is hope that submissions we have presented to the council will see some of the heavy-handedness of these proposed rules not applied to smaller farms or farmlets.
In almost all my observations of lifestyle blocks, farming activities, e.g. livestock and poultry, are reared.
Councils are not taking into consideration that often these blocks are only partially class 1 or class 2 soils, with the balance in hill, gully or poorer soil types, so they should not come under a blanket zoning, but should be individually assessed.
We don’t have the same financial backup as large scale farmers, but we all have the same family and life issues.
• Keith Hay owns a lifestyle block near Wanganui.
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