Outdoor living requirements loosened following Carter letter
Tuesday, 17 September 2024
The Carter Group has secured a win, with the overseers of Christchurch’s housing intensification plan no longer recommending large private balconies or “outlook space” as minimum requirements in central city apartments.
The changes mean new apartments could be built with less private outdoor space than currently required, should the council accept the recommendation on Wednesday.
Current rules require at least 6m² of private outdoor space for a one-bedroom residential unit above the ground floor. For a two or three-bedroom unit, the minimum becomes 10m², or 15m² for a unit with more than three bedrooms.
The recommendation - made by an independent hearings panel - was reduced to 5m² for any residential unit, after the Carter Group warned that the original 8m² minimum proposed in the recommendation, as well as other changes, could warrant a judicial review.
The proposed changes are part of the Christchurch City Council’s ongoing work on plan change 14, a residential and commercial intensification plan intended to make it easier for the city to grow.
Greater Ōtautahi chairperson M Grace-Stent supported the move to limit balcony space because it would allow for a “great variety” of units, they said.
Reducing space would also be more cost-effective for buyers and developers, they said, creating a wider variety of properties.
“Anything that brings the costs down and more housing to be built in the city centre is good to hear.”
But not everyone agreed.
Tony Simons, chairperson of the Riccarton Bush Kilmarnock Residents’ Association, said “anything that reduces outdoor spaces isn’t necessarily a good thing”.
The council was meant to loosen up central city rules earlier this month, mainly within two or three blocks from Cathedral Square, but postponed the vote when Carter Group alerted it to potential errors.
Carter Group - one of the largest developers in greater Christchurch - successfully opposed the proposed minimum dimension (the smallest allowable length or width) for private outdoor space being 4m, instead, the panel now recommends keeping the existing minimum of 1.5m.
It also succeeded in removing the creation of “outlook space”, which would have required some apartment windows to overlook certain spaces, like the street below, at a certain depth.
The group argued to the plan’s overseers - through the Christchurch City Council - that there was legal precedent forbidding councils from creating new obstacles to housing intensification.
Under the new recommendation all residential units will still need to technically have 10m² of outdoor space available, but whatever isn’t used on a private balcony can be spent on a larger communal outdoor space.
Christchurch city councillors can reject the adjusted recommendation at a full council meeting on Wednesday. If they do, the council will have to pitch an alternative rule to Housing and RMA Reform Minister Chris Bishop to make a final decision.
Meanwhile, Bishop has granted the city council an extension to December 20 to decide on residential and commercial intensification rules across Christchurch.
The general idea is that the larger a suburb’s commercial centre is - with Riccarton, Hornby and Papanui being the largest outside of the city centre zone - the easier the council should make it to build taller and more densely, according to central government.
Most suburbs will be affected only within a 200m area of a central commercial point, or up to 800m for the largest commercial centres. The city centre zone is within the four avenues.
The future zoning rules for the rest of Christchurch won’t be decided on until December 2025.