MBIE also rebukes Councillors and implies intervention

 

Housing New Zealand, and the Ministry for Business Innovation and Employment (MBIE) (so the Government) have issued their responses to the Council’s evidence on the Unitary Plan and the Rezoning exercise.

What Housing NZ and MBIE wrote in full can be seen at the bottom of this post.

 

But some key extracts:

Housing NZ:

 

So the distribution of the higher density zones for residential capacity is lacking. This would be showing from the MBIE evidence extract:

Blue = low capacity for residential development
Red = high-capacity for residential capacity

 

Those heat maps are backed up by the numbers here broken down by Local Board area:

 

While the Isthmus around the City Centre slacks off you can see where the greatest and widest capacity potential for residential development sits; the South and the West. Meaning as the Auckland Transport Alignment Program would show you have to get the bulk of your residents through choke points at Otahuhu-Mt Wellington in the south and Waterview in the north-west for them to get to and from work (which will not work over the long run).

 

MBIE continue to summarise their main points as below:

 

In which MBIE then go and say:

 

And in the same stroke condemns the Councillors for downzoning:

 

Yes the implying of Government intervention was made above.

 

Basically the Government has told the Panel that the spatial applications of the Unitary Plan Residential zones is disappointing and has asked the Panel to commit to more significant upzoning especially on the Isthmus itself.

Whether the Panel does so and equally whether Council adopts any recommendations to allow the Isthmus to be more intensified is yet to be seen.

 

But the question to the Governing Body is do they want to annoy the Government any more than they already have given last month?

I would hope not!

 

Housing New Zealand

 

MBIE