Adding: "At that time the governing body will publicly debate and make its final decision on the unitary plan and the council will publically notify its decisions."
But there will be no more public submissions on the issue. Richard Burton, chairperson for the Auckland 2040 lobby group, says there was no public submission to re-zone single house zones.
"Council has no submission which asks for it," he says.
The council contends that even though there was no public submission calling for rezoning, it has the power to do so in the Proposed Auckland Unitary Plan (PAUP) legislation.
It says the PAUP legislation allows the Independent Hearings Panel to incorporate 'out of scope' changes into its unitary plan recommendations. "Part of the process is for the council to propose logical changes even when they might not be supported by a submission," council said in its statement.
Public submissions on the PAUP closed on February 28 last year. Council received 9400 submissions but Burton argues that most residents did not realise what was going on.
He says most people looked at the unitary plan, saw their zone was for singles housing "as it has been for decades" and figured there was no need to lodge a submission.
The level of single house zoning in Auckland sits around 32 per cent. Burton admits that figure could be lowered but that council changed the fundamental rules in September.
We need to ensure there are well-designed small units which can be built across all the suburbs in Auckland to provide housing choice for young people, and all people in Auckland really.
"What the council did was underhand," he says. "They proposed changing zone descriptions -- and the objectives and policies -- without any submission asking them to do that."
It's proposed that single house zones must meet one of two tests; it must be in an identified area of historical or natural character, or it must be in an area with significant environmental or infrastructure constraints.
Burton says he is in favour of intensification, but believes the council is going about it the wrong way. His fear is that if a property loses its single house zone designation, a developer could buy it and push the coverage and height restrictions "which would completely alter the residential character of the street".
"The impact on a single street of one of the developments having not just one house but six or eight will be profound," Burton says.
"It's the aesthetics, the residential character. It's the streetscape, how the road looks and feels. It's the long-standing expectation of the residents that have lived in those streets from many years."
Burton says without the protections of a single house zone, residents could find a three-storey apartment complex where their neighbour's house once stood.
Leroy Beckett, spokesperson for Generation Zero Auckland is in favour of the rezoning proposals.
If we were able to build more in the city suburbs, there will be less sprawl, less travel and less carbon emissions.
"We need to ensure there are well-designed small units which can be built across all the suburbs in Auckland to provide housing choice for young people, and all people in Auckland really," Beckett says.
He is convinced smaller houses are the solution to Auckland's housing crisis.
"Young people should be able to get onto the property ladder while having access to the city centre and public transport routes," he says.
He maintains that a large proportion of the Auckland community support the zoning changes, and that is not just the young who are kept off the property ladder.
"If we were able to build more in the city suburbs, there will be less sprawl, less travel and less carbon emissions," he says.
Beckett says they're not calling for tower blocks in Mt Eden. They just want low-rise apartments and units that can be plotted around the suburbs that are designed to fit well within the local area. Heritage buildings could sit side by side with townhouses without ruining the look of an area.
"There is no reason you can't have a leafy suburb with a small townhouse."
Generation Zero called for submissions on the PAUP in 2013/14 and says the time for debate is pretty much over.
"It would be great if we could have a huge citywide debate on this but it's not going to happen," says Beckett.
