Hastings District Council has plans to speed up its rezoning of five development areas to allow for more homes to be built and to address the region's housing crisis.
That includes rezoning land off Brookvale, Lyndhurst and Kaiapo roads in Hastings, the Havelock Hills, and Irongate.
The council's Strategy and Policy Committee met on Tuesday and received two reports about rising housing needs.
The reports highlighted that Hastings District will require a further 6500 new homes in the next 10 years to meet demand.
That is a whopping 650 new homes built every year on average up until 2031.
The committee heard that last year marked a record for the council issuing building consents, with 530 consents granted.
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The committee voted to endorse a recommendation, outlined in the reports, to speed up an existing strategy to rezone certain areas of land in Hastings.
"Council will look at bringing forward the next stages of development planned for Brookvale, Lyndhurst, the Havelock Hills, Kaiapo Rd and Irongate in 2030, to between 2024 and 2027," a council statement read.
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Advertise with NZME.That would see new homes and infrastructure built on that land much faster. However, it still requires sign-off from the full council.
"The practical implication of this is we would need to start in relatively short [time] the structure planning and infrastructure planning for those developments and would bring a paper on November 30 to the full council," Hastings District Council CEO Nigel Bickle said during the committee meeting.
Hastings mayor Sandra Hazlehurst said it was important to achieve the right balance between addressing the ongoing housing needs and protecting the area's fertile produce-growing soils from being developed.
"Our growing soils are key to the health of our economy, their value can't be understated.
"At the same time, however, we have a growing population, and people needing houses - it's a big and complex challenge, and we have to plan carefully to manage the issues."
