Seawalls

If you’re the owner of a coastal property and thinking of constructing or doing maintenance on a seawall, you’ll need to get in touch with us early in your planning.  You may need to apply for one or all of:

• a building consent from Council
• a resource consent from Council
• a coastal permit from Greater Wellington.

Greater Wellington are happy to work with you to identify if you’ll need a coastal permit, and if the proposed work is below the mean high water springs. You may need a registered surveyor if there’s different perspectives on this; this survey would be at your own cost.

Things to think about

Some things that will affect the building and resource consents you’ll need include:

• your site boundaries
• volume and location of earthworks
• design of proposed wall, and its height and slope
• land use above the wall.

See our General earthworks page for more information on these.

Book a pre-application meeting early

Our Resource Consent and Building teams will work with you to understand what consents you’ll need, whether for a new seawall or to carry out maintenance on an existing one.

The first step is to contact us early to make a pre-application appointment to discuss your specific situation, and the seawall consent requirements for your property. See Have pre-application meeting for details.

Note: The standards for fences and walls do not apply to seawalls that are constructed for natural hazard mitigation purposes (District Plan Part 3 General residential zone)