-
Roger Sutton - Source: Close Up -
Watch Video
-
Related
The man charged with rebuilding Christchurch says he'd like to make it go faster, six months on from the destructive, fatal earthquake.
But Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Authority chief executive Roger Sutton told TV ONE's Close Up that finalising whether some land can be built on again, and finding new sections, takes time.
Sutton said it takes time to bring people to Christchurch to get on with things, like trying to resolve all the land issues.
He said there are still thousands of households who don't know if their land is going to be zoned green, meaning houses can stay on it, or red, meaning it is a write-off.
"They're currently orange land, and there's literally a hundred different geotech engineers out there at the moment trying to do more field work, doing more survey work... And that work can only happen so quickly," he said.
"But I'd really like to be making that work go a whole lot faster."
Asked if this is his biggest frustration, he said: "I think the biggest frustration is for those people who actually don't know about where they're going to go - whether they're going to be green or red.
"But I guess there's also the frustration of trying to make sure more land, more land and house packages, come to market for people who have found out their land is red who want to move, because a lot of those people's lives are very difficult, very stressful at the moment. All that takes time."
Sutton said his first priorities are turning land which is zoned orange, either green or red and then working with developers and the city councils to try and get other land brought to the market as quickly as possible.
"But all that takes time."
He said there's no point in getting more land brought into the market and then finding out in a couple of months time that that land isn't going to meet modern seismic standards and is going to give people further issues.
"So what we're doing is important and it's got to be done right, and I know that's causing some real frustration out there."
Sutton said CERA is making steady progress and is a third or a quarter of the way through the buildings that need to be demolished in the central business district.
"It would be nice to be making a whole lot faster progress in some areas. But there's only so much resource you can thrown at some of these issues, so we're working through them as quickly as we can."
Sutton was CEO for lines company Orion when the 6.3 quake struck on February 22, killing 181 people.
He became a familiar face and source of straight talking for Cantabrians during the disaster.
He started his new role as chief executive of the Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Authority on June 13, the same day as the latest major aftershock.
