Two of the country’s best known mayors have joined forces to ask the Government to stop signing off new greenfield housing developments under the fast-track law, days after a 1,200 home subdivision north of Auckland was approved over the objections of both the local council and the region’s water company.
Auckland Mayor Wayne Brown and Queenstown Lakes Mayor John Glover wrote to Infrastructure Minister Chris Bishop on 10 August asking for what they called an immediate pause on future fast-tracking of housing on the edge of towns and cities. The letter, reported by the New Zealand Herald, argues that the two fastest growing districts in the country are being handed subdivisions they cannot service.
“The unchecked use of the fast-track system to force tens of thousands of houses into rural areas with limited public infrastructure is not helpful for addressing these challenges,” the mayors wrote. They said that accelerating greenfield housing in places that are not infrastructure ready “only causes congestion, service constraints, higher long-term costs and community unrest”.
Their request was blunt. “We need to focus on smart growth that is supported by good infrastructure, which is why we are requesting a pause on fast-tracking greenfield housing developments for the foreseeable future,” the letter said. The mayors also took aim at who ends up paying, writing that when Wellington forces ratepayers and taxpayers to subsidise development in the wrong places, “the only real winner is the developer who avoids paying the true costs of growth”.
The trigger was the Delmore development at Ōrewa, on the northern edge of Auckland. Bishop announced the approval on 10 August, describing a project on more than 61 hectares of land made up of “over 1,200 residential dwellings, a commercial area, two neighbourhood parks, a network of protected ecological areas, and the construction of a State Highway 1 interchange”. He said the project was predicted to contribute $1.22 billion to the local economy over 25 years, and would involve managing about 44 hectares of native vegetation along with new wetlands.
Delmore is the thirtieth project approved under the fast-track process and the eleventh in Auckland. The applicant, Vineway Limited, lodged the application in January, and the approval came roughly five months after the expert panel was appointed. That speed is the point of the law, which was designed to get consented housing and infrastructure out the door faster than the standard resource consent route allows.
The difficulty is what happens underground. Watercare told the panel it cannot connect the area to public water and wastewater networks until at least 2033, which means the subdivision will run on private water supply and its own wastewater treatment plant for years after the first residents move in. Both Auckland Council and Watercare opposed the application, arguing it sat outside the sequence of growth and infrastructure planning the region has already committed to.
The interim wastewater arrangement drew the loudest reaction. Under the approval, treated effluent can be trucked north to Whangārei’s Kioreroa Road treatment plant when on-site capacity runs short over summer, a plan 1News reported would involve tankers crossing the Brynderwyn Hills. Save Our Harbour campaigner Tim Howard said the plan put extra pressure on Whangārei’s wastewater system and that approving the project before the infrastructure question was settled was irresponsible. Whangārei Mayor Ken Couper said the plant was running below capacity but that any request to use the city’s wastewater infrastructure would need careful evaluation to protect local services and keep costs off Whangārei ratepayers. Northland Green MP Hūhana Lyndon questioned whether the region was becoming a dumping ground for Auckland’s waste.
Brown has not held back. He told the Herald the decision made a “mockery” of the fast-track law and should be abandoned. Auckland Council analysis cited in the same report suggests ratepayers could end up subsidising infrastructure costs by as much as $1.5 billion if all currently fast-tracked projects proceed, because approvals granted this way sidestep the usual development contributions councils collect to pay for pipes, roads and reserves.
Bishop has not accepted the case for a pause, but he has signalled that something is changing. Asked about the mayors’ letter, he said he would “have a bit more to say, not today, but in the next couple of days around some changes that we are looking to make around infrastructure fast-track projects”, and indicated the changes would relate to infrastructure requirements placed on projects. No detail has been released yet, and it is not clear whether any change would apply to approvals already granted or only to applications still in the queue.
That leaves an awkward gap. Delmore is consented. The homes can be built. The pipes that would normally come first are still years away, and the argument about who pays for them has moved from a planning hearing into a public fight between two mayors and a senior Cabinet minister in an election year. Housing supply, infrastructure funding and how much say councils get over growth on their own boundaries are all live questions heading into the 2026 general election, and voters weighing up where the parties sit can compare their positions using our voting tool.
What happens next rests largely with Bishop. If the promised changes tighten infrastructure requirements before approval, the mayors will have won the argument without winning the pause. If they apply only to future applications, the councils are left carrying the consequences of the thirty approvals already made.
What do you think? Should fast-track approvals require the water and wastewater connections to be locked in first, or is getting houses consented worth the infrastructure catch-up? 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 🙂
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