June 25, 2024
Taranaki land rent due
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Paraninihi ki Waitotara Incorporation is in arbitration this week with the West Coast Settlement Reserves Lessees Association over what lessees should pay to use some of the country’s best dairying land.
About 250 of the incorporation’s 300-plus properties across Taranaki are leased out under a legislative framework that provides for seven-yearly rent reviews based on the unimproved value of the land.
The new rent was supposed to apply from January 1 this year, but a mediation process failed to get agreement, triggering the compulsory arbitration under retired appeal court judge Raynor Asher KC.
Chair Dion Tuuta says there are arguments about what should be considered an improvement on the land.
He says Paraninihi ki Waitotara’s lawyer is arguing the 1997 Act which created the system, replacing an earlier regime of peppercorn rents with 21 year reviews, introduced the idea of fairness.
Last financial year the incorporation receiveed $7 million in rent from 20,000 hectares of leased land.
The arbitration will run all week.