Planning for future growth; providing evidence of planning

1 June 2017
Planning for future growth; providing evidence of planning

MBIE, working with the Ministry for the Environment (MfE), has provided a set of new tools to help high- and medium-growth councils to better understand their local markets for housing and business space.

“This should inform better urban planning that adequately enables housing and business development,” says MBIE Manager of Construction and Housing Policy, Di Anorpong.

“We’ve provided councils with guidance, and a tool to help determine a housing development’s commercial feasibility, using local market information. This will help planners meet the requirements of the National Policy Statement on Urban Development Capacity (NPS – UDC), which was first announced by the Government in late 2016.”

“High and medium growth councils have to monitor market fluctuations every quarter, and prepare good housing and business development assessments at least every three years. Councils will need to use this information in their planning decisions,” Ms Anorpong says.

The NPS – UDC requires councils to:
• Enable enough development opportunities in their resource management plans, supported by infrastructure, for new housing and business space to match projected growth in local areas.
• Monitor and respond to housing affordability data, building consent data, and prices.
• Understand what is feasible to develop in current market conditions.
• Provide excess capacity for development (20 per cent in the short to medium-term; 15 per cent long-term) to promote competition between land owners (high- and medium-growth councils only).
• Co-ordinate with infrastructure providers and ensure their consenting processes are customer focused.
• Recognise the national significance of ensuring sufficient development can happen.

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