The Sandy Walkers have filed an Environment Court appeal against aspects of the Tauranga City Plan.

The Papamoa based environmental lobby group has already scored against the draft plan successfully contesting changes to Mount Maunganui's high rise profile.

Jill Parry pictured with a design of Mount Maunganui illustrating the problems associated with allowing high rise buildings near the beach.

The Sandy Walkers campaign flooded the council with submissions opposing changes to the former District Plan, now City Plan, that allowed beach-to-beach high rise development at the base of Mauao.

In the new City Plan, anything away from Maunganui Road and over three storeys high is now non-complying, which is a much more stringent legal test.

The new Sandy Walkers appeal focuses on an alleged change to the high tide line and the increased set back from Mean High Water Springs used in the planning of beach front encroachments.

The Sandy Walkers also say the City Plan fails to take account of the New Zealand Coastal Policy Statement 2010.

Sandy Walkers spokesperson Jill Parry has been critical of both aspects of the City Plan in the past, alleging the high tide line has been altered; and that city planners who were fully aware the new coastal policy statement, would affect the plan, ignored it.

The City Plan proposes to remove the protection of the Norfolk Pines in Pilot Bay and along the Mount Maunganui esplanade, something that the Sandy Walkers say the Tauranga City Council is unable to do under the Coastal Policy Statement.

In an email notifying the successful lodgement of the appeal, Jill says filing was made difficult because much of the critical information needed for the attachments has been withdrawn from the ratepayer funded Tauranga City Council website.

The Sandy Walkers also oppose beachside high rise development along the Papamoa Coast.

Jill says the Walkers' campaign to stop high rise development overlooking the beach has been boosted by the New Zealand Coastal Policy Statement which has to be taken into account in environmental issues and gives teeth to the Sandy Walkers' assertions that the natural beach environment with trees, native or exotic, is worth protecting.

'It came out in May last year,” says Jill.

'All the planners knew this was coming and they ignored it. Now they have to change all their plans. They could have so easily made sure their plans would glove in with this.”