‘Time to reclaim the square’: Councillors want cathedral fence moved

Wednesday, 18 June 2025

City councillors want the fences to be moved back to the steps to open up Cathedral Square.

City councillors want the fencing in front of the mothballed Christ Church Cathedral to be moved — and do not want the council to pay for it.

Christ Church Cathedral Reinstatement Ltd (CCRL), the charitable company managing the rebuild, says it is open to the fences being moved, but it does not have the budget to do so.

Some councillors have suggested the council could dip into the $5 million cathedral levy, collected from ratepayers for its restoration, to move the fencing and restore the land.

CCRL has a lease, until 2030, from Christchurch City Council for 1472m² of Cathedral Square land. The land in question is 1250m² at the front of the cathedral. CCRL pays $1 a year.

Last August CCRL decided to pause the cathedral restoration project indefinitely after the Government turned down a request for more taxpayer money.

CCRL has an $85m funding shortfall to meet the forecast earthquake repair and restoration cost of between $209m and $219m.

There is no suggestion the reinstatement work will restart soon and calls are growing for the council to claim the land back.

Two-storey portable cabins sit on the land that is leased by the council and block the north-south view through Cathedral Square.

The council wants to open up space for events in Cathedral Square and enable people to see and walk seamlessly across the square from the north and south.

For this to happen, CCRL’s site office would have to be moved. The double-storey portable cabins provide a base for the last two remaining CCRL staff members and sit on the southern corner of the council land.

A CCRL spokesperson said it was supportive of the possibility of the fence being moved to the boundary of its site office. Moving the site office “would require further consideration”, they said.

CCRL said it did not know how much it would cost to move the cabins.

The Press asked all 16 councillors and mayor Phil Mauger if they wanted to see the fences moved and who should pay for it.

Of the seven who responded, all wanted the fencing moved back, and none were keen for the council to stump up the cost.

Some, including Andrei Moore, Sara Templeton, James Gough and Mark Peters, wanted the council to look into whether the levy could be used to fund the work.

The cathedral restoration project was mothballed indefinitely last August after the Government turned down a request for more taxpayer money.

The council has been collecting $6.52 from each household since 2018 to pay for the $10m grant it planned to contribute to the restoration. It has already paid out $3m and has $5m collecting interest. The levy is due to stop in 2028, but the council is proposing to stop collecting the levy from the start of next month.

Gough said CCRL should pay for the fencing to be moved as it holds the lease and changed the status quo by stopping the restoration.

However, if that was not possible, a pragmatic solution would be to use the existing levy money, he said.

Templeton said moving the fences and portable cabins could be funded with the accumulating interest from the levy.

She believed the lease was specifically “for the purposes of reinstatement” so, with no restart date, CCRL should relinquish the lease as a matter of good faith.

CCRL could reapply for a lease once it was ready to restart the project, she said.

“It is time for us to reclaim the square as the key public space at the heart of the city and make it a safe, active and attractive place to be.”

Templeton also wanted the Anglican Church to open up some of its own land vacant in front of the cathedral and to the side near Tūranga

The council could lease that land from the church in a similar arrangement, she said.

Moore also wanted the fences moved because he said it would be hugely helpful for promoters bringing events to Christchurch.

Peters said the city needed as much civic space as it could get and they needed to reclaim the public realm in the square.

Mauger said he was keen to look at anything that would reactivate and bring people back into the square.

Council planning and consents head Mark Stevenson said staff were exploring options with CCRL and the council would be briefed on progress in July.

There have been calls to move the fencing back since the mothballing decision was made.

When asked why it had taken so long, Stevenson said it had taken time for staff to work through the issues, including CCRL’s position and implications of moving the fence.

He said paying for the removal of the portable cabins was one of the options being considered.