The Government has touted its national policy statement on urban development as a vital tool to increase the supply of housing. But while some councils have made early moves to act on its requirements, there are calls for greater funding and guidance to make it a reality
As Jacinda Ardern and her ministers have defended their plans to crack down on property investors and reduce demand in the over-heated housing market, the supply-side problems have receded somewhat into the background.
Yet improving the supply of new builds is arguably the most critical part of tackling the housing crisis, albeit an area where it will take longer for measures to have an effect.
Among the initiatives Ardern has touted in that space is the national policy statement on urban development, a set of rules to remove minimum parking requirements, increase intensification through fewer restrictions on height and density, and improve what has been described as poor-quality and restrictive planning by councils.
The national policy statement, which came into effect on August 20 last year, places a new emphasis on growing "up and out” by mixing medium- and high-density housing with steady expansion along pre-planned transport corridors.
The Government has faced criticism over the relatively long timeframe for some of the requirements, with councils in tier-one cities - Auckland, Hamilton, Tauranga, Wellington and Christchurch - not required to lift restrictions on density and height limits until August 2022, while minimum parking requirements do not need to be removed from all councils’ plans until February that year.
However, a number of local authorities have taken action ahead of the deadlines, with the Selwyn, Nelson and Hutt City councils having already changed their planning rules to remove the minimum car parking requirement.
Hearings panels and the Environment Court are also already required to have regard to the policies in the national policy statement, including plan change requests that would add to development capacity and urban environments even if they are “unanticipated by RMA planning documents or out-of-sequence with planned land release”.
The national policy statement’s effects are already being felt in central Canterbury’s Selwyn district, the second-fastest growing district in the country behind Queenstown Lakes.
Selwyn District Council environmental services group manager Tim Harris told Newsroom the council had received 18 private plan change requests from those wanting to benefit from out-of-sequence developments.
Harris said the council had used outside consultants to help manage the additional workload. One complication was that the council was also in the middle of reviewing its district plan which had “a bit more of a planned approach to growth” - an important part of Selwyn’s growth in recent years.
“A number of the private plan changes fall within our infrastructure boundary that have been identified for growth, but some don’t - I guess that’s a challenge that all councils now need to deal with.”
While there would be some applications that challenged the council’s future spatial planning, Harris said it believed the national policy statement’s focus on “good urban form [and] being responsive to capacity issues” were sound.
Selwyn would welcome more guidance and support from the Government on how to fully implement the requirements, he said, although it was “just natural” that some elements of a new policy instrument would have to be worked out in real time.
The district’s high-growth status meant funding new infrastructure was less of a problem, although there were always problems related to maintaining that infrastructure once it was in place.
And while housing in the area had traditionally been “dispersed” due to the ready supply of flat land, Harris said it made sense for the district to look at intensification given the issues of climate change and sustainability,
“It needs to be a bit of a paradigm shift in terms of our people, not only themselves but right across New Zealand, outside of Auckland and certain parts of Wellington.”
'Don't know what good looks like'
But some local authorities are concerned about the lack of guidance provided to date on how to address the technical difficulties associated with adopting the policies.
A Local Government New Zealand (LGNZ) spokesman said councils were “trying to do a modelling and funding exercise where they don’t know what ‘good’ looks like”.
There was a possibility some councils were “over-egging” their planning work to make sure they did not fall foul of the rules, while it was not entirely clear how the policy statement would interact with the Government’s proposed Resource Management Act reforms.
LGNZ president and former Tauranga mayor Stuart Crosby told Newsroom that “councils of all stripes” broadly supported the intent of the national policy statement and efforts to improve the rigour of planning practices.
“We know we need to make space for development in our cities if we’re going to tackle our longstanding and worsening housing supply shortage.”
However, Crosby said councils faced a number of challenges in making it a reality, such as finding the expertise needed for some of the modelling requirements.
“Councils just don’t have the in-house capacity or capability to undertake this sophisticated modelling required by the NPS, and are relying on consultants to advise them which is proving quite expensive,” he said.
“The challenge is that central government is also not well placed to help councils with this challenge, given that these skills are in short supply across New Zealand.”
The more substantive problem related to funding, with the policy statement requiring councils to provide plan-enabled and infrastructure-ready development, but with “no answers as to how we fund this infrastructure”.
“We know that rates aren’t up to the task, particularly when many cities are grappling with the financial effects of Covid, but without an alternative the NPS-UD will struggle to deliver on its purpose.”
Housing Minister Megan Woods told Newsroom the Government was aware of councils’ desire for greater support in implementing the national policy statement, and intended to address the issue as part of its broader package of housing policy.
“One of the things that we've been saying all week since we launched the Housing Acceleration Fund is that one of the things that we will be looking to do is, how it is that councils can start having regard to [the NPS] before it's legally operative in their district plans.”
Woods said one of the options under consideration was the development of “templated tools” which could be put in place to assist councils with the modelling and planning processes.
