Auckland floods: Auckland Council launches investigation into impact on infrastructure and planning issues

Auckland Council has today launched an investigation into the implications of the January 27 floods on infrastructure and planning issues, including directives from the Government and National for greater intensification.

The council will request a meeting with ministers to discuss the Government’s role in the planning response, including legislative and funding implications.

Council planning staff will urgently prepare a scope of the work by March 2, which Mayor Wayne Brown said will be a “nasty, big piece of work”.

Planning, environment and parks committee chairman Richard Hills said the current focus is quite rightly on helping people impacted by the flood, but it is important to begin work to understand what it means for the medium-long term.

“This is climate change … this is what people have been saying for 30 years would happen. It has just, unfortunately, come much faster than what we hoped for,” Hills said.

Planning, environment and parks committee chairman Richard Hills. Photo / Dean Purcell

The city’s infrastructure and planning shortcomings were exposed in the flood disaster, prompting the council to review its plans, regulations and policy settings.

The council will also address a directive by the Government and National to insert new rules in the Unitary Plan allowing people to build three houses of up to three storeys on most sites without resource consent. Gone is the single housing zone to be replaced by medium density housing.

Councillor Daniel Newman said the plan from Wellington needs to be pulled in its entirety, but councillor Shane Henderson said the plan is not the problem but the solution because it allows for hazard exclusions.

Henderson said in his ward of Waitakere it was older houses that got really slammed, but new subdivisions did well.

North Shore councillor Chris Darby said the floods were a wake-up call for Auckland and saying it was a one-in-200-year event was simply an excuse not waking up to the risk.

He advocated a risk-averse approach on behalf of the wider community for processing applications in hazard areas, saying in November and December last year, 18 per cent and 16 per cent of new dwellings consented respectively were in flood zones and erosion zones.

“This is a wake-up. We need to act on this information,” he said.

The proposal to set up the investigation was passed unanimously by the planning committee.