Helicopters and Housing Don’t Mix

The recent decision by the Independent Hearing Panel to consent a private helicopter pad in Westmere, against the recommendation of Auckland Council, sets an alarming precedent for our city.

38 Rawene Avenue Westmere – Decision [PDF]

Despite 1227 of 1397 community submissions opposed, and the testimony of those in Herne Bay who have suffered years of noise, vibrations, and draughts from private helicopters consented there, the commissioners made the extraordinary assertion that “there was nothing untoward, unacceptable, or significantly out of character with helicopter noise in an urban residential environment.”

Who are they kidding?

Many cities restrict private helicopter movements in residential areas, because of the safety risks and noise intrusion. A string of crashes in New York, most recently the deaths of a family of five when their helicopter fell apart and fell in into the Hudson last year, led the city to resolve to ban all non-essential flights.

Excessive noise is a killer too. In a recent European Environment Agency report, noise from traffic and aviation was found to impact the health of 110 million people. Effects include hearing loss, sleep loss, stress and mental health problems and leads to 66,000 early deaths a year. This is higher than for those exposed to second-hand tobacco smoke or lead exposure, and three times higher than the road toll.

Auckland Council thought they had done enough to stop any more private helipads being consented. Elected members and community leaders have been told repeatedly that helipads are non-compliant under the Auckland Unitary Plan. And yet the commissioners chaired by Kit Littlejohn decided helicopter movements are a permitted activity as long as noise standards are met, and if they don’t (as in this case) the consent can be granted as a restricted discretionary activity.

Did council get it wrong? Or did the commissioners? If this is a problem with the AUP, it needs amending. If the decision is unsound, it needs to be tested in the courts. Enabling private helipads in the inner suburbs is against the strategic priorities of council and government to reduce transport emissions and encourage a more compact city (which requires people to live in proximity without enraging each other). The commissioners should have considered this.

Instead they found that just because helicopters are not listed in an activity table doesn’t mean that activity should be restricted in residential areas. People can do what they like as long as they meet noise standards (and even when they don’t). In this way the decision leans into the narrative that people choosing to live in a city should expect to be disturbed.

It isn’t good enough.

People want and deserve high-quality living environments, and to be protected from excessive noise in residential neighbourhoods. Parks and beach reserves are vital for recreation, to connect with nature. Enabling helicopters in these spaces is unhelpful and thoughtless of most people who work and live there, some doing shift work, others with young children.

This precedent could impact anyone, anywhere in Tāmaki Makaurau.

This interpretation that ‘helicopter landings and take-offs are inherently a part of the residential use of a dwelling’ could lead to a swathe of private helipad applications across the city’s coastline. There are many sites with similar characteristics to the Rawene Ave property across the Inner West, Outer West, North Shore, Eastern Bays, and the Manukau.

Private helipads are currently deemed a ‘restricted discretionary activity‘ on Waiheke and other Gulf islands. In 2021, a Stuff article reported that Waiheke locals were ‘fuming’ at the prospect of a 49th private helipad. Four years on, there are now 64 helipads on the island.

Some argue that siren cars or overnight construction are worse, but there isn’t a quota of unpleasant experiences that must be distributed. Excessive noise is a problem whatever its source and can, and should, be tackled.

Swiss cities protect quiet times at night and on Sundays, and the country has some of the highest levels of social cohesion, life expectancy and GDP per capita in the OECD.  Barcelona’s famous Superblocks were not created to reduce emissions, or to increase public space, though they do both these things. They came out of the desire to reduce noise where people live.

There is some good news.

After the Mowbray/Williams resource consent application for a private Westmere helipad was lodged in November 2021, the Waitematā, Waiheke and Aotea/Great Barrier Local Boards responded by requesting investigation into how well Auckland managed helipads, and subsequently advocated to council to adopt the National Planning Standard 15. In 2023, Auckland Council did so. This means that actual noise standards must be used to assess acceptability of proposals instead of using noise averages.

In February 2024, the three local boards called for plan changes to the AUP and Hauraki Gulf Islands Plan and Councillor Mike Lee put in a notice of motion to the Planning & Environment Committee a month later. His proposal to make private helipads a prohibited activity failed, but Councillor Julie Fairey’s friendly amendments – to review the more permissive Hauraki Gulf Islands plan and tighten compliance and noise monitoring – were carried.

Councillor Lee’s  proposal seemed to fail for two reasons. Firstly, there was no budget in the Long Term Plan (out for consultation at the time) for an expensive and uncertain plan change. and the governing body, while in many cases sympathetic, had indicated they wanted to avoid adding further lines to the work programme on an ad hoc basis. The second reason may be that staff are wary of tackling helicopter usage.

Nothing to see here!

When the three local boards first requested tighter restrictions on private helipad consents in 2022, staff suggested a review of compliance to gauge whether private helicopter use was a problem. This sounds reasonable – except the Auckland Council website explicitly said that it was not council’s role to follow up on aviation complaints, directing people to the Civil Aviation Authority, which also does not handle noise complaints. (Following Waitematā Local Board advocacy, council now offers a pathway to make a complaint.)

Secondly, council is reluctant to monitor compliance of existing consents, citing the lack of resource to do so, even though consent conditions generally allocate the cost to the consent holders.

Finally, council staff have said that it would be too difficult to justify prohibition of helicopters in all cases, but no one has proffered an example of when helicopter movements in a residential suburb would be reasonable.

Prohibited activity status must indicate “where the relevant activities will be prohibited from.” Wouldn’t it be reasonable to restrict commercial helicopter operations for private hire in residential zones in defined metropolitan suburbs? After all, heliports in Mechanics Bay, Onehunga, and Albany are not far away.

Some way or other the position should be clarified, through the courts, a change to the AUP or through overarching legislation, the RMA and/or Civil Aviation Act.

Cities may be unequal places, but together we can make decisions to support holistic wellbeing for everyone.

That’s the Auckland we want.

Next
Next

The Social Housing Gap