| Council Meeting | Thursday 23 March, 1pm |
| Extraordinary Meeting to adopt the Draft Annual Plan and Consultation Document | Monday 24 April, 3pm |
| Council Meeting | Thursday 27 April, 1pm |
Photo: Jesse Palmer – Flickr
Soon customers will be able to apply for a consent through Objective Build, a new service designed to create consistency, transparency, and quality in building applications.
This new system has been built after interviews with over a hundred builders, architects, designers, and industry professionals across New Zealand to ensure it meets their needs. It improves the ability to reuse information across applications, clearly see the status of an application, action required updates, and manage a consent throughout the lifecycle.
The online platform is the first release of Objective Build, which aims to create a complete consenting system for New Zealand. The platform will connect seamlessly to backend council systems, allowing New Zealand to work across a single platform. Building and Construction industry professionals will have one account to handle all applications, instead of the multiple accounts they currently have.
To minimise any disruptions to you, WDC Building Control staff will work toward migrating all active consents (CCC not yet issued) into the new system. Once this has been completed, users will receive an email asking them to register for Objective Build.
Applications will be available in Objective Build soon. Until this time, consents should be submitted through the online consent portal AlphaOne.
Objective Build has lots of new features including updated status tracking, organisation management, template applications and more. You can find out more here and here.
Westland District Council has recently installed chlorination equipment at all the previously unchlorinated water supplies and chlorination will begin soon. Council must comply with the Drinking Water Quality Assurance Rules 2022, which impose requirements on drinking water suppliers relating to the supply of safe drinking water to communities, including chlorination.
Chlorination implementation is scheduled for the following communities:
More information about water chlorination, including answers to frequently asked questions, can be found on Council’s website.
Liddell Contracting, with the expert guidance of Rhodes Monumental Masonry, began work in late February at the Cass Square Cenotaph site, carefully removing the four anchor plinths and monument, the concrete foundations and levelling the site to prepare for the eventual reinstallation.
The team have now begun hollowing out the stonework pillars and roof sections, which will lighten the load bearing and make the monument more secure and earthquake safe. Liddell’s are confident that the monument will be back in place, ready for Anzac Day celebrations on Tuesday 25 April 2023.
Photos: Liddell Contracting
Careers day, ‘Inspire to Aspire’ held at Pakiwaitara mid-February was a great success for all involved. The Hokitika Museum was delighted to be awarded the most inspiring stall, with their interactive displays and engaging stories. The booth featured video footage to tell the story of Cocky the parrot, who lived in Hokitika for 52 years, a display showing how Museum staff package collection items for storage, and a hands-on display of stereoscopes giving viewers a peak at the world’s first 3D photographs. By far, the most popular item was a selfie booth where students put on a hat and posed as a miner who had just discovered gold.
A competition was held where visitors guessed how many items in the Museum Collection. The winner was Havah Blight whose guess was only 10,000 over the correct answer of 150,000, with Westland High School exchange student Julia Reichel runner-up. When Havah came in to collect her prize, curators Helen Cook and Sue Asplin gave Havah and her family a grand tour of the collection store to witness at first-hand how such a huge number of items are stored.
The Museum, along with the MTFJ team, also supported Regan Tamanui an internationally recognised stencil artist to host a workshop.
Text, photos and video: Hokitika Museum
Prize winner Havah Blight (front right) and family enjoy having a look around the Museum collection stores with Collections Curator Helen Cook (at back).
Renny Jones and Lucy Crossman have fun in the photo booth.
Each new triennium a committee is appointed to allocate funds to applicants for Creative Communities funding through Creative New Zealand. Members of the committee are local to Westland, and include elected Council members and a local iwi representative.
The following members were appointed by Council at their meeting on 23 February 2023.
| Committee Member | Interest areas |
| Councillor Jane Neale | Westland District Councillor |
| Councillor Reilly Burden | Westland District Councillor |
| Nikki-Leigh Wilson-Beazley | Creative NZ ask for a representative of local iwi to encourage workshops, rehearsals, performances, festivals or exhibitions in Māori heritage or contemporary art forms |
| Delwyn Alexander | Creative fibre, Film, Performance Art |
| Mary-Anne Bell | Accessible art experiences for wider community, local craft groups, workshops |
| Paul Kerridge (2nd Triennium) | Visual arts, film, and performance art, encouraging pathways and experiences to encourage careers in art |
| Emma Kay | Creative art experiences for children, music and performance art |
| Sophie Roberts | Music, Art experiences for low-vision community |
| Phoebe Wilson | Music, performance art and alternative art presentation, graphics as an art form. |
| Tallulah Ngahuia Martin-Naylor | Toi Māori, Māori artists, music, and community projects |
Congratulations to everyone who completed the Library’s Beanstack Summer Reading Challenge for 2022/2023!
In 1st place with a massive 6268 minutes of reading logged was Dyani Ilton. In 2nd place with 3373 minutes was Eva Kruhlak (pictured on left) and in 3rd place with 1465 minutes was Pieta Gillespie (pictured on right)
Thank you to Census NZ for providing prizes for all our winners.
The library has many fun reading challenges throughout the year that anyone can be part of. Visit the Reading Challenges page on our website to find out more.
Photo: Westland District Library
When the Otira Tunnel was opened on 4 August 1923, a specially minted gold medallion was presented to Prime Minister William Massey. It was created by the well-known Hoglund family from Springfield. Following this tradition, a special coin or medallion, is being created and will be sold to commemorate the occasion Centenary celebration in August this year. The new medallion is being made by Zenith Coins’ Adam Gilshnan from Greymouth.
A book written on the tunnel, “Through the Alps”, written specially for the Centenary, is currently being edited, and will be produced by James Print in Greymouth. Co-writers Bruce Shalders, Diane Gordon Burns and Chris Stewart, are proud of what they have researched and written, and of the large number of photographs. It contains stories about the men who battled the conditions to construct the tunnel, and a chapter on the lives of the women and children, the families of the tunnellers, who lived in both Otira and Arthur’s Pass.
Speaking of the tunnellers, a replica tunneller’s single man’s hut is being constructed to be situated near the Otira portal for the Centenary celebrations. Afterwards it will be transferred to the Westland Industrial Heritage Park in Hokitika.
Before the next meeting of the Centenary Committee, there will be a working bee at the Otira portal to clear vegetation ready for the crowds expected on August 4th 2023.
Text: Simon Williams, Otira
Photo: Otira tunnellers huts, supplied by Simon Williams
Applications are invited for project funding under the Creative Communities New Zealand Local Arts Funding Scheme.
Application Forms and Application Guides are available in electronic form from communities@westlanddc.govt.nz or see our website.
Enquiries to Sarah Brown, Community Development Advisor, 03 756 9047
