Human Rights Commission - Canterbury Earthquakes: review and appeal rights

The Human Rights Commission have launched three web pages for those affected by earthquakes.

The first, Canterbury Earthquakes: review and appeal rights, is here. The introduction to the web page states:

This information collects in one place the review or appeal rights for common situations people face arising out of the earthquakes in Canterbury. It does not claim to be a comprehensive review of all the appeal and or appeal rights. If you would like legal advice you should consult a lawyer.

This information comes from the websites of the Christchurch City Council, CERA, Fletcher Earthquake Recovery, the Office of the Ombudsmen and from research by the Human Rights Commission.

Some review and or appeal rights relate to a particular issue and others apply in most, if not all, situations.

The issues covered by the page are:

• The review of red stickered notices
• Obtaining reasons for decisions made by a council about you
• Zoning decisions
• Declining the government’s offer
• Obtaining reasons for decisions made by CERA about you
• Repairs
• General Zoning Issues
• Other rights of review/appeal
• Accommodation, property, landlords and human rights

The second is the web page (here) What complaints processes are available if I am unhappy with the Fletcher Earthquake Recovery or building contractor repairs/service provision? This is a distillation of appeal information from the Fletcher/EQR website.

Surprisingly there is not a page dedicated to EQC - what there is will be found buried in the third page on repairs (here).

These pages are a useful bringing together of information for those in the Green Zones who are new to the problems of zoning and insurance. As they are based upon information from official sources there are no new insights, or silver bullets, for those in the Red Zones.
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