Clearing the Way for Road & Slip Recovery

On the Coromandel Peninsula extreme weather events in 2022-23 triggered over 110 active slip sites, saturated ground conditions and major roading closures. The Thames-Coromandel District Council’s Recovery Plan identifies infrastructure repair, access restoration and durable resilience as key priorities.

At Align we supported the programme by negotiating land access and tenure-rights across rural corridors and under-investigated terrains, enabling contractors and infrastructure teams to mobilise sooner and navigate complex multi-owner land rights. For example, at Thornton Bay a significant slip resulted in a home being red-stickered and emergency stabilisation funding of NZ$1.3 m was approved.

We’re also proud to support the Hastings District Council’s broader road-network rebuild: following Cyclone Gabrielle we secured land access and negotiated rights across rural corridors so that culverts, bridges and key arteries could be repaired or rebuilt without undue delay.

What Align did:

Identified high‐risk land / tenure blocks where slip remediation or road recovery required access over multiple parcels.
Negotiated access or rights-acquisition on behalf of councils and contractors, clearing legal/tenure holds before mobilisation.
Provided certainty of access so road repair programmes could proceed with lower risk of delay.

Our role is to make it possible for machinery to start work by securing the landowner permission, tenure and access rights needed to build and maintain critical assets.” We negotiated tenure and access agreements that go beyond the first repair job so that future inspections, maintenance and upgrades can happen without being blocked by old land-restrictions. In short: we clear the way now and safeguard the way ahead.

What this means for local authorities:

Fewer delays on site because land access, tenure and permissions are already in place before contractors arrive.
Future proofed rights for inspections, maintenance and upgrades, not just the first repair job.
Lower legal and reputational risk through clear, fair agreements with landowners.
Better alignment of design and delivery, as land requirements are integrated with engineering from the outset.
Stronger value story to ratepayers, showing that today’s works also protect tomorrow’s resilience and investment.