Auckland Council still shielding posh areas from development, Government may intervene
Friday, 22 July 2022
A site-specific analysis may have been completed, but Auckland Council has made almost no changes to plans to continue shielding 16,000 homes in some of the city’s most central and affluent areas from intensification.
The decision has drawn criticism from Housing Minister Megan Woods, who said the Government had a range of options for intervention that may be appropriate to use at a later stage.
“I continued to be disappointed that the council is planning on restricting development in areas that are so well suited to more people being able to live in as part of a modern, vibrant urban environment, where people don’t have to travel so far to get to work, schools and recreation opportunities,” she said.
Under the council’s proposed new boundaries, the 21,000 properties classed as being in special character areas would shrink by about a quarter.
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“I haven’t seen council’s evidence yet, but restricting development in these areas would have high negative environmental, economic and social impacts that it’s high time were addressed,” Woods said.
It was not appropriate for the Government to intervene yet, with the draft plan in its late stages of development, but once it was notified, Woods said council evidence would be reviewed by her officials.
The reduction in character areas is subject to plan changes being considered by the council’s Planning Committee in August, public submissions and hearings, and the recommendations made by an independent panel on changes they think should be made to the Auckland Unitary Plan.
Planning Committee chairperson Chris Darby said the proposal was a balanced approach to delivering the Government’s strong direction to enable more housing, while ensuring areas with special character value could be protected.
If the council rejected a recommendation from the independent panel, the final decision would be up to the environment minister, Darby said.
He said the National Policy Statement on Urban Development allowed for some exemptions to be proposed to limit building height and density requirements for things important to the city, where there was strong evidence to support it.
The panel would consider public submissions, hold hearings, and make recommendations to the council on changes to the Auckland Unitary Plan.
The council has released a map showing areas proposed to lose character status in red.
The council has also put out preliminary rules for where townhouses and larger apartment complexes can be build.
Areas within 1200 metres from the edge of the city centre and 800m from the edge of the city’s 10 large metropolitan centres, or around rapid transit stops, would be freed up for building six storeys or higher.
Areas up to 200m around smaller town centres and up to 400m around large town centres would also be freed up for apartment and terrace housing.
Inside these “walkable catchments” there would be limits on building if 75% of individual properties strongly contributed to character values, while outside walkable catchments 66% of properties would have to contribute to the character status to restrict intensification.
The National Policy Statement directs the country’s five largest cities to drop rules that restrict housing developments, and requires councils to undertake a site-by-site analysis when applying character protections.
Councils are not prevented from having special character protections, but under the policy statement the level of justification required is greater than before.