Auckland Council rejects Twyford criticism of housing performance

Friday, 31 August 2018

Phil Twyford said the planning rejection of this development on Dominion Road was an Auckland Council housing fail.

Auckland Council has rejected criticism from the Government that it's not doing enough to accelerate home building.

'We are, in this town, 45,000 homes short and we're not building enough,' said Phil Twyford, the Minister of Housing and Urban Development.

'Our urban land and housing is literally some of the most expensive in the world,' he said in Auckland on Friday.

'It's largely the fault of land use planning, which is the council's responsibility,' said Twyford.

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The minister confirmed an Urban Development Authority with wider powers to plan and develop some large projects, could be running by the end of next year or early 2020.

Auckland Council has generally backed the plans for a UDA, which the government has been consulting on for a year.

However, there is frustration that the rhetoric laying the blame on the council, is unchanged from that of Twyford's predecessor Nick Smith, in the previous National-led government.

'I think successive Governments have been critical of council because sometimes it's seen as an easy target,' Mayor Phil Goff told Stuff.

'The passing of the Unitary Plan (the city's planning rule book in 2016) has been a massive step forward in the development of a different style of home.'

The council's planning chairman Chris Darby said a whole range of data showed home construction was growing rapidly.

The Unitary Plan introduced provided for more than 400,000 new dwellings.

In the past year, the number of homes completed jumped 38 per cent to 9,433, and the number of consents issued to build new homes rose 28 per cent to 12,845.

'That's our evidence, if the minister would like to show his evidence we will respond - anecdotes don't stack up,' Darby told Stuff.

Darby said other council moves such as the investment in public transport, and the $28 billion committed to transport over a decade signalled 'development opportunities are many'.

Housing strategist Leonie Freeman said while some council responsibilities had not improved, such as consenting, many of the issues facing the development industry were not the council's.

She cited project financing, the capacity and the capability of the construction industry, as well as the need to have some certainty of buyer demand.

'The question is, who is showing leadership?'

'We've got to get past pointing the finger and game playing, there's a lot both the council and the government could do better.'

Councillors are unimpressed with Twyford citing the refusal to grant planning permission to an apartment development, as an example of council failing.

The project on an arterial route had been advanced by the council's own development agency, Panuku, but planning commissioners ruled its scale, design and the demolition of a heritage building as against the rules.

'That would have delivered 102 new apartments on Dominion Road, but the planning commissioners turned it down to protect a new dairy,' said Twyford.

Stuff understands the issues which scuttled the design had been repeatedly flagged by council experts, but largely ignored by Panuku.

Twyford's suggestion that a proposed Urban Development Agency could assume planning responsibility for the area along Dominion Road - a possible light rail route - has been welcomed by some.

'We think it's a good thing,' said Gary Holmes, manager of the Dominion Road Business Association.

He said the significant investment in light rail, had to be built on an urban regeneration programme.

'Sometimes working with one agency like that can be easier than with council, which has multiple competing interests, and clearly not always in sync with each other.'

Darby said the council had begun work a year ago looking at the planning needs along mass transit routes such as Dominion Road, but had paused when the government signalled interest in taking over the work this year.

'We were well abreast of this,' he said.

Twyford said legislation setting up the UDA could be through by Christmas or early next year.