Newman Catholic Hall on Waterloo Quadrant sits on a fresh water spring that holds significance to local Maori - one of Auckland's Mana Whenua sites.

Auckland Council plans to remove 1373 Mana Whenua sites from its Unitary Plan in an effort to speed up developments as the pressure increases to build more houses to cope with booming demand.

There are currently 3600 sites of cultural significance to Maori listed in the Auckland region.

Even Maori groups are saying the current process the council uses is too heavyhanded.

Auckland Council says it plans to remove 1373 of these sites as they are either duplicates, not of Maori origin, not of value to Mana Whenua or an accurate location had not been confirmed.

At the moment landowners who want to carry out work within 50 metres of a Mana Whenua site have to apply for resource consent and in some cases consult with local Iwi.

Council said it hoped to cut through some of the red tape by removing a chunk of the sites that had not been verified as significant.

READ MORE: Historic Auckland building sits on spring

It said requiring resource consents for earthworks within the vicinity of the sites was "placing an unnecessary impact on affected land owners" and it hoped to remove a level of "regulatory burden".

However, an Auckland Council spokeswoman said it was not withdrawing the sites to streamline building and development.

"Removing 1373 Sites of Value, due to a lack of sufficient evidence will improve the overall robustness of the remaining 2227 sites."

The Maori heritage team was reviewing Maori cultural heritage in Auckland to ensure it was appropriately recognised, protected and enhanced, the council said.

Local iwi and the council's own Independent Maori Statutory Board both wanted to maintain the sites but the council said it did not receive any written statements on the proposal to remove the 1373 sites.

The council said its audit found 752 sites did not have values assigned by Mana Whenua, 73 sites were non-Maori or duplicates, 552 sites did not have a confirmed location and there were 10 sites where it was unknown if the object of value was a natural or archaeological feature.

Ngāti Whātua Ōrākei Trust said the process of Cultural Impact Assessments needed to be made clear for property owners and iwi.

In some cases up to 15 iwi had to be consulted before work could be carried out near Mana Whenua sites.

"This is not right, in both a planning and tikanga Māori sense. The relevant iwi to be consulted in each part of Tāmaki Makaurau needs to be clearly identified," a Trust spokesman said.

"We appreciate the potential issues involved; Ngāti Whātua Ōrākei was asked by the Council to consult seven other iwi on a housing development on our own land. Something is clearly wrong when that happens."

The trust agreed with council that further research was needed in relation to the sites and in some cases the process had been rushed.

It did not want homeowners to be "unnecessarily burdened" through Cultural Impact Assessments.

There would be another opportunity to put the sites back on the list if appropriate evidence was found, it said.

Democracy Action Group chairman Lee Short said he agreed with the council's plan to remove the sites.

In fact, the Democracy Action Group was calling for all of the 3600 sites to be removed until they had been verified.

Short said land owners, including utilities companies like Watercare and Vector, had been spending their own time and money consulting with Iwi and obtaining cultural impact statements.

While the Democracy Action Group agreed with the council's plan to remove unverified sites, the way the council went about verifying sites was not up to par, he said.

"I think that the council has shown incompetence in this area."

The council had carried out a "desktop review" rather than visit the sites and make a thorough review process with the Archeological Society and the Heritage Advisory Panel.

There was also a lack of consultation, Short said.

"No one is against preserving sites of genuine significance to culture and heritage but what we're saying is they need to be verified."

The council will put the plans to cut the sites to its Development Committee on Thursday and the changes would come into effect immediately if it got the nod.

All listed Mana Whenua sites can be viewed here (from page 229)