Housing and Infrastructure Minister Chris Bishop has ruled out stopping fast-track housing approvals, saying he has no legal ability to do it and that a pause would require Parliament to change the law.
Bishop told RNZ’s Morning Report on Monday that he had heard the councils out but could not give them what they had asked for. “There’s no legal ability to pause fast-track housing projects, but I am conscious of the concerns of Auckland and Queenstown,” he said. “Also, there’s concerns from Lydia Gliddon down in Rolleston, as well and other mayors around the country.”
The request came from Auckland Mayor Wayne Brown and Queenstown Lakes Mayor John Glover, who wrote to Bishop on 10 August asking for an immediate pause on fast-tracking greenfield housing, days after a 1,200 home subdivision at Εrewa was approved over the objections of Auckland Council and Watercare. Newswire covered that letter and the Delmore approval last week. Waimakariri Mayor Dan Gordon and Selwyn Mayor Lydia Gliddon wrote in support a few days later.
Bishop’s answer was that the system is doing what it was built to do. Fast-track was designed to enable developments that sit outside the order councils had planned for, he said, so approving projects on the edge of towns and cities is the process working rather than failing. He said councils were consulted before any project was referred in. “There’s extensive consultation with councils as part of the referral process, for example. So, when someone applies, one of the first things I do is write to councils, write to the transport agency, write to DOC if they’re relevant, write to a range of different people and seek their feedback on it, and that takes quite some time, to be honest, often.”
What he has conceded is the money. Under the current rules the development contributions a developer pays towards pipes, roads and reserves are locked in at the point the application is made. For a subdivision in a place the council never expected to service, those charges are often set low, because the council never planned any infrastructure there to charge for. Bishop said that was a fair complaint. “We have decided that that’s a legitimate point that councils are making,” he said. “We’re going to amend the Local Government Act to allow councils to retroactively or essentially in response to a fast-track proposal, amend the development contributions, which will likely mean that they lift those development contributions for out of sequence development.”
The change was announced on 14 August by Bishop and Local Government Minister Simon Watts. The release says the Local Government Act 2002 will be amended so councils can update their contributions policies after a fast-track application has been lodged, recover the costs of growth caused by the development, and pass costs across boundaries where a project loads infrastructure in a neighbouring district. Any change has to be adopted within six months of a fast-track approval being granted.
“Growth should pay for growth and we are building a flexible infrastructure funding and financing system to match our new, flexible planning system,” Bishop said in the release. He described the process as a “much-needed circuit breaker” and said 31 projects had now been approved across housing, infrastructure, mining and quarrying, aquaculture and renewable energy. Watts said councils had identified situations where fast-track developments “may proceed ahead of council infrastructure planning, where developments may take up network capacity intended for live-zoned land”.
The amendment is an interim fix. Development contributions are due to be replaced from 2029 by a development levies system, and the Government is treating this as a patch to carry councils through until then.
There is also a limit that matters a great deal to the mayors who started the argument. The changes will not apply to fast-track projects already approved, or to substantive applications lodged before the amendment takes effect. The Εrewa subdivision that triggered the letters is consented, so it sits outside the fix. Watercare has said it cannot connect the area to public water and wastewater until at least 2033. On the numbers Auckland Council has put forward, ratepayers could end up subsidising the infrastructure for currently fast-tracked greenfield projects in the region by as much as $1.5 billion.
Local Government New Zealand called the change welcome but incomplete. President Rehette Stoltz said some fast-track developments were high quality and consistent with local plans, while “other fast-track projects result in houses built in unsuitable or even dangerous areas”. She said the problems had been compounded by “fast-track’s failure to consider the cumulative effect of multiple fast-track developments in one area, as we’ve seen in places like Selwyn and Auckland”.
Glover, who is deputy chair of the LGNZ infrastructure reference group as well as Queenstown Lakes mayor, said the funding gaps ran into hundreds of millions. “This means that either communities are left to cover these costs or cope with inadequate infrastructure investment,” he said. He wants clearer standards for privately provided infrastructure and “a fresh look at whether developments outside of zoned growth areas should progress through a fast-tracked process at all”.
The Canterbury mayors made the same point about capacity going unused. Gordon told the Otago Daily Times that “in Waimakariri we have capacity for up to 17,000 new homes already. What we’re seeing is fast-track applications come in for places that are not suitable at all.” Gliddon said Selwyn’s district plan provided for 32,760 homes over 30 years with the infrastructure planned alongside them. “Our concern isn’t growth itself, it’s ensuring growth is supported by the roads, water, transport and community facilities residents rely on,” she said.
Three months out from the general election on 7 November, this is now a straight argument about who decides where houses go and who pays for the pipes underneath them. The Government is betting that consented sections beat planned ones, and that a higher bill sent to developers will settle the councils down. The mayors are arguing that the bill still lands on ratepayers wherever the infrastructure has to be built anyway. Housing supply, infrastructure funding and council control over growth are all on the ballot, and voters comparing where the parties sit on them can use our voting tool.
The legislation has not been introduced yet, so the detail of how far councils can push their charges, and what counts as reasonable when they calculate the cost of growth, is still to come. Until it passes, the approvals keep going through under the existing rules.
What do you think? Should the Government be able to consent subdivisions councils say they cannot service, or should the water and roads have to be locked in first? Leave a comment below and tell us where you stand.
This article was written by AI, briefed to report the facts, hopefully without some of the bias people bring to the job π
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