Use of the old Mission Bay Bowling Club land

Plan Change 78

Auckland Council’s Plan Change 78 – MDRS Response

Prior to the Government changing housing density rules across NZ’s 5 cities, Auckland was working under its widely supported Unitary Plan that allowed for 900,000 more homes to be built in our city to ensure housing demand in Auckland is met as the population grows. The density in our Unitary Plan was well planned, enabling focused development of the required infrastructure to match the density planning, the greatest density along transport corridors and centred around neighbourhood localities where jobs, services and transport were focused.
The new Government legislation overruled Auckland’s Unitary Plan, requiring Auckland and the larger cities in NZ to implement the Government’s Medium Density Residential Standards (MDRS) by August 2023. This legislation enables high density housing, up to 4 stories, nearly anywhere in Auckland, regardless of site suitability, allows significant density away from any transport routes and services and away from employment hubs, and allows large density developments without the normal and accepted planning controls for sunlight, streetscape, amenity and protection of the permeable surfaces that are so vital in reducing climate change impacts such as flooding. While the MDRS is advertised as 3 homes to 3 storeys high per site not requiring a resource consent, the standards set, allow for far greater density than that. Eg. The height prescribed is 12m which can quite comfortably fit 4 storeys on many sites. Site size was not defined and in Auckland can be 300m2.

Auckland Council’s response to the Governments MDRS legislative directive was to simply select the Unitary Plan zone which most closely fit the standards set by the government, which is Mixed Housing Urban (MHU), and apply this to practically every site currently zoned Single House (SH) or Mixed Housing Suburban (MHS). This means nearly every site in our suburbs would be zoned MHU if not already zoned for even greater density. They also had to change the rules for the MHU zone to have even greater height to boundary rules and greater impermeable coverage in order to meet the government set standards. Of real concern is that the MHU zone that our Auckland Council has recommended all of Auckland is zoned for as a minimum, has unlimited dwellings per site. This was NOT dictated by the Government’s MDRS legislation but Auckland Council has gone significantly further than what was legislatively required. Although a Resource Consent is required once planning over 3 dwellings, this can not be notified if it fits within the new standards..

Council sought feedback on Plan Change 78 which our Association gave. We felt the Unitary Plan has already allowed for enough intensification of our suburbs and to allow even further intensification with largely one blanket zone would be undesirable. The main reasons cited were increased flooding in weather events, subsequent water quality issues in our bay, and loss of urban forest. We presented our case at the Hearings in April. You can view our presentation here –
Plan Change 78 (Click on link)

Subsequent to the Hearings commencing, Auckland Council requested from the government a 1 year delay in implementing this plan change in order to assess infrastructure constraints. This request was granted so the Hearings were put on hold. We now wait to see what the government in power after the election will do with this mandate.

Plan Change 78

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