Catch-all wording binds resort to file updated event plans with council every year
The Court of Appeal has dismissed a challenge to Millbrook Resort’s New Zealand Open consent, holding that its catch-all condition was not too vague.
In XRay Trust Ltd v Queenstown Lakes District Council [2026] NZCA 528, released 4 November 2026, the court found that the condition obliged Millbrook Country Club Ltd (Millbrook) to give the Queenstown Lakes District Council (the council) updated event plans before each tournament.
Millbrook sought consent in September 2021 to host the Open at its resort near Arrowtown every year until 2031. In November 2021, an independent commissioner granted consent without notifying neighbours. XRay Trust Ltd (XRay), which owns neighbouring land, sought judicial review of both decisions in the High Court in December 2023. The High Court dismissed the application, and XRay appealed.
The key condition required Millbrook to run the event in accordance with “the application as submitted.” XRay argued that this wording created no firm duty to supply updated operations, traffic management, and health and safety plans each year, because the application had only “anticipated” that requirement. Alternatively, it said the condition was too uncertain to be valid.
The court rejected both arguments. It held that a court must first interpret a challenged condition, objectively and in context, and should find it uncertain only if its meaning remained unclear after doing so. On its natural reading, the condition obliged Millbrook to do what its application said it expected to be required to do.
“Such an obligation did not require an explicit condition,” the court said.
The condition did not need to spell out what the council would do with the plans, the court added. The council could check whether each plan fitted within the consent and take enforcement action if it did not, or use the plans to consider reviewing the conditions. XRay’s call for a more specific condition was “simply a complaint about the substantive merits of the decision,” the court said.
XRay also argued that the council should have notified it, saying Millbrook’s revised application wrongly implied that XRay had agreed to a spectator exclusion zone beside its boundary. The court accepted that the wording carried that implication but found that it did not lead the commissioner to skip assessing the effects on XRay.
The court held that the council had adequate information to decide against notification. It pointed to the detailed application, a site visit, input from council officers, and past editions of the Open at the resort. It also rejected XRay’s claim that the decisions were unreasonable.
The court declined XRay’s application to file further evidence and dismissed the appeal. XRay was ordered to pay Millbrook’s costs for a standard appeal and a standard application on a band A basis, plus usual disbursements, with an allowance for second counsel on the appeal.
