‘Stalling tactics’: Council seeks another extension to housing density plan

Thursday, 3 April 2025

Christchurch representatives plan on asking RMA Reform and Housing Minister Chris Bishop - yet again - to let them delay the remaining parts of the city’s housing intensification plan.

One final extension could be all the Christchurch City Council needs to opt out of medium density residential standards (MDRS), despite millions of dollars spent on the process and the wishes of those who support the controversial rules.

As a continuation of plan change 14, the city council has until December to decide on if and where it applied MDRS - a government-initiated policy to make it easier to build up to three, three storey homes per section - in Christchurch.

Christopher Luxon, Chris Bishop, and Simon Court outline plans to drive investment, push economic growth, and scrap the Resource Management Act at a post-cabinet press conference.

But councillors heard at a full council meeting on Wednesday that deadline - itself an extension - coincided with the month where councils might begin opting out of MDRS, as per the process recently proposed as part of upcoming RMA reform.

Mayor Phil Mauger and mayoral candidate Cr Sara Templeton jointly moved to agree to let staff apply for the extension, but Cr Andrei Moore said the move made it seem as though the council had already decided to opt out when it had not.

“With respect, no,” said council’s principal planning advisor Ike Kleynbos, who said it was just about ensuring the council had options.

“That, in a sense, presumes opting out,” Moore said.

A council planner says an extension did not presume the council would opt-out of MDRS, but it would give them more options.

The council has been resisting the mandated planning rules for years, reacting to the concerns of many residents who fear access to amenities like direct sunlight could be lost if taller homes were built right next door at a greater density.

Tony Simons, representing the combined residents association, said there was no harm in getting the extension, but even if Bishop said no, he said the council should reject MDRS anyway.

However, Harrison McEvoy from urbanist group Greater Ōtautahi, said housing intensification was necessary for the city to cope with a growing population. There was a housing crisis and “ordinary people are struggling to pay rent,” he said.

Cr Andrei Moore says the council should just get on with it. It was “high time we wake up and deal with the reality of city growth”.

“These are the same stalling tactics that council has been using for nearly three years.”

The plan change process had cost millions of dollars and involved more than 900 submissions, so McEvoy said residents expected the council to follow through.

Moore told The Press the council needed to get on with the plan instead of spending “yet another year” resisting it.

Without a plan to enable more housing, he said more homes would be built in Rolleston and Prebbleton, where fast-tracked residential developments were under consideration.

Those developments meant “more traffic in Christchurch using Christchurch infrastructure without paying rates towards it”, he said.

“High time we wake up and deal with the reality of city growth.”

Kleynbos told councillors the upcoming law change also proposed a way for council to reverse the housing intensification decisions it made in December 2024, which upzoned a few hundred meters of residential land around the commercial centres of most suburbs in Christchurch. Doing so would likely require a whole new plan change, he said.

Councillors agreed to request an extension to September 2026, but the final decision rests with Minister Chris Bishop.

Bishop was unavailable for comment. He previously granted the council an extension on the grounds the Government wanted to ensure flexibility around how MDRS was implemented, but has also stressed the importance of increasing housing supply.