Chris Bishop speaks about the coalition Government's agenda to fix New Zealand's housing crisis at the Property Council of New Zealand Residential Development Summit.
Video / Sylvie Whinray
Housing Minister Chris Bishop has granted Auckland Council a one-year extension to notify changes on new intensification rules.
In a speech at the Property Council of New Zealand Residential Development Summit in Auckland this morning, Bishop said he has notified Mayor Wayne Brown of the extension.
Brown had been frustrated with Bishop for delaying a request from the council for an extension, after the minister said before last year’s election that councils could opt out of housing density legislation drawn up in a rare bipartisan agreement between Labour and National to address the country’s housing shortage.
The Medium Density Residential Standards (MDSR) legislation and an earlier National Policy Statement on Urban Development (NPS-UD) allowed for “3 by 3″ houses on most sections without resource consent and greater density around transport corridors.
The council responded with Plan Change 78 for feedback and hearings to make changes to its planning blueprint, called the Unitary Plan.
Auckland Council has a further year to develop rules for intensification.
Today, Bishop said Auckland is currently in a unique situation for two reasons - the impact that the Anniversary Weekend floods and Cyclone Gabrielle had on the city in areas that were tagged for intensification, and that the coalition Government has scrapped Labour’s failed Auckland Light Rail project.
This meant Auckland no longer has to take theoretical future light rail stations into account for upzoning decisions and was having to do some rethinking, the minister said.
Bishop said he let Brown “know my expectation that his council continue progressing the National Policy Statement on Urban Development elements of Plan Change 78 to ensure development capacity is enabled as soon as possible”.
“[A] further one-year extension will allow the council to take into account a large amount of zoning work where light rail was theoretically going to take place, the impact of the floods and our intention to make the MDRS optional.”
Bishop said the Government’s position is that the MDRS tools were too blunt and one-size-fits-all. Councils that wish to continue to use them will have to ratify their continued use.
Auckland Mayor Wayne Brown has got his wish for more time to develop new rules for intensification. Photo / Sylvie Whinray
Last month, Brown said the extension would ensure Plan Change 78 would “live-zone” sufficient land to deal with 30 years of housing growth and take account of work done since last year’s floods to down-zone areas at risk from flooding.
“I support your goal of enabling more housing … [but] forcing us to continue with the current prescriptive process would be completely at odds with that,” the mayor said.
The Coalition For More Homes is opposed to the council being granted an extension, saying it has already had one extension. If a second delay is approved, “we are unlikely to see any effects on housing supply to zoning changes from the NPS-UD until 2027 at the earliest”, it said in a statement.
It has called on Bishop and Environment Minister Penny Simmonds not to approve a delay and direct progress on NPS-UD matters “to enable more homes in the right place, sooner”.
The Character Coalition, representing 60 resident and heritage groups, said the current hearings on Plan Change 78 are costing member groups and government departments like Kāinga Ora and the Ministry of Housing and Development more than $500,00 in a process the council is likely to scrap.
“The Government needs to make the MDRS optional now, so that Auckland Council can postpone its Plan Change 78 hearings,” a Character Coalition spokeswoman said.
