Resource Management (Enabling Housing Supply and Other Matters) Amendment Bill
The Environment Committee has presented its report on the Resource Management (Enabling Housing Supply and Other Matters) Amendment Bill to the House.
The Resource Management (Enabling Housing Supply and Other Matters) Amendment Bill seeks to rapidly accelerate the supply of housing in urban areas where demand for housing is high. It would apply to territorial authorities in New Zealand’s larger cities: Auckland, and greater Hamilton, Tauranga, Wellington, and Christchurch.
The bill would amend the Resource Management Act 1991 (RMA) to require “tier 1” councils to set more permissive land-use regulations to enable greater housing intensification.
The bill would do this in two main ways:
It would introduce a streamlined process to enable tier 1 councils to implement the National Policy Statement on Urban Development (NPS-UD) more quickly. The new intensification streamlined planning process (ISPP) would be based on the streamlined planning process in the RMA.
The bill would also apply medium density residential standards (MDRS) in all tier 1 urban environments. They would enable medium density housing (up to three dwellings of up to three storeys per site) to be built as of right across more of New Zealand’s urban environments.
Recommendation of the committee
The Environment Committee has examined the Resource Management (Enabling Housing Supply and Other Matters) Amendment Bill.
We recommend by majority that the bill be passed, and that the House take note of our proposed amendments in this report.
Because of the tight timing for our report back to the House, we have not included our recommendations in a revision-tracked version (RT) of the bill. We would expect the House to have the opportunity to consider our recommendations through a revision tracked Supplementary Order Paper (SOP) at the Committee of the whole House stage.
We have asked the responsible Ministers to provide the committee with a draft version of such an SOP beforehand. We strongly recommend that the RT SOP be publicly available as soon as possible