Marlborough District Council Roading Assets - Activity Management Plan 2015 - 2018 SECTION 1 EXECUTIVE SUMMARY 1.6.15 Legal Road Reserve 1.6.15.1 Physical Description The land underlying road formation is legal road vested in the Road Controlling Authority which in the case of local roads in Marlborough; is Marlborough District Council. Council is required to value the underlying land. Current valuations include the land value. The value of the underlygand as assessed to be $134.05 Million in 2009 (refer Appendix Valuation). There is no need to depreciate the land value as it has an infinite life. To date legal road vested in Marlborough District Council that either has no road formation on the land or has some formation which is not maintained by Council has not been valued. This land is commonly known as “paper road”. Council periodically considers requests to ‘stop’ legal road. Proceeds from any subsequent sale are deposited in the road legalisation account. This account is then used for any land purchase and to fund capital improvements. At this stage no detailed work has been undertaken to determine areas of paper road and valuation other than some work to identify unformed roads on the Wairau Plains. Council will need to determine a methodology to value (or not to value) paper road. 1.6.15.2 Demand / Growth The current network of legal roads; formed roads plus unformed, paper roads, has adequate coverage to service the future needs of the region. Extension of the current legal road network is not considered necessary. Land acquisition for any future development projects is undertaken in association with, and as a charge to, the specific project. For example new subdivisions often result in Council having new land vested for road. The volume of legal road can therefore be expected to increase in line with new road development as discussed in Section 4; Future Growth. 1.6.15.3 Costs / Financial / FWP There are some on-going costs associated with the maintenance of paper roads. These include the management of noxious weeds growing on legal road reserve. Weeds on maintained roads are managed under verge maintenance as discussed in Section 6.8, Verges. Weeds on paper roads are managed through lands protection operations budgets within Council. There is no renewal costs associated with the asset having an infinite life. Capital works are where Council may purchase land for a road. This does not usually occur with all new capital assets gifted to Council as part of private developments. There is no land purchase envisaged by Council during the life of this AMP. 1.6.15.4 Issues and Risks The following have been identified as the main issues related to legal road and in particular ‘Paper Roads’: Asset Data: currently no work has been undertaken to collate existing data on paper roads or to accurately determine the final numbers and extent of paper roads. This issue has been included in the Improvement Plan in Section 14. Asset Valuation: Currently paper roads are not included in the asset valuation. This may be entirely appropriate given that they do not depreciate and the Council if not activity seeking to sell them. Public Access: The public have legal right of access to paper roads. Issues arise when this access is denied by adjacent land owners. The Council may need to develop strategies / procedures for dealing with access issues. 30 September 2014 Page 131 of Section 1