A brief history of the legal status of the baches
From 1911 onwards all new baches were built with the consent of the council. From 1945 onward no new baches were built, but building permits for renovation of the existing 72 baches were issued up until 1968. Water and electricity were eventually connected, and rates bills paid by all baches.
In 1972 a special Christchurch City Council sub-committee recommended that all baches up to city standard be removed in 7 years, baches of fair standard in 5 years, and baches of poor standard in 2 years.
In 1976, the CCC decided that all 72 baches should be cleared by 31st March 1986. Bach owners were given until 30th April 1979 to install electric toilets and sign a lease agreeing to clear the site by 31st March 1986.
For those cave baches with no electricity it was the end of an era, with 10 of the bached demolished or torched.
On 18th November 1985 the Christchurch City Council deferred its decision to remove the remaining baches.
In April 1988 the Christchurch City Council started reinvestigating whether it had the power to grant licences to bach owners as it had done in the past.
A number of hearings and court cases followed…
In 1991, the bach-holders jointly brought 73.36 hectares of land in the valley at Taylors Mistake. The Christchurch City Council encouraged this purchase with the intention that all existing baches would relocate to 48 new freehold sites on this land. Allowance was also made for sites for some bach holders who had lost their baches earlier. The bach holders would then gift the balance of the land to the Council as recreation reserve.
In 1992 a professional mediator was employed to facilitate discussions between the bach owners, Christchurch City Council, Hagley/Ferrymead Community Board, Environment Canterbury (then the Regional Council) and the Department of Conservation. The Tangata Whenua was consulted and their concerns satisfied. Over a 14 month period, 13 meetings were held. Save the Bay were invited to participate, but refused to do so.
The 1992 mediated solution provided for:
- 14 baches to be removed and relocated to freehold lots at back of Bay,
- 13 other baches in the Row to be given freehold title
- The remaining 21 baches in Hobsons Bay and Boulder Bay to be given leases
- The Association was to retain title to another 1.4 ha of hillside and a further 0.61 ha on valley floor. The council would administer these lands, but if the adjacent land was ever rezoned, administration and control would return to the Association
- Association would gift the remaining land to the Council as recreation reserve.
In 2002 the issue ended up in front of the Environment Court. At the hearing some people expressed the view that the baches were a ‘blot on the landscape’ and others were of the opinion that they represented a pure insight into part of the life of the ‘working people of Christchurch’ or that they represented a priceless view occasioned by very few places in the world.
In its decision, the court sided with the bach owners and concluded that their dwellings ‘create a dramatic tension between the forces of nature, namely the seas and the cliff faces and the tenacity of man’. The court also stated that 'these baches exhibit something of the same tenacity and emotional reaction that one obtains seeing a lighthouse situated on a rugged and seaswept coast’. The zoning proposed by the council was confirmed, which provides for most of the baches to remain at least in the foreseable future.”