From the Meeting - Strategy, Policy and Finance Committee
10 February 2022
From the Meeting - Strategy, Policy and Finance Committee
This morning the Strategy, Policy and Finance Committee met for the first time this year.
Up for discussion was a report on Council’s Housing and Business Capacity Assessment (HBA) and elected members voted in support of the recommendations that Council adopt the HBA (main and technical reports), and that Council approve the inclusion of the Housing Bottom Lines into the District Plan.
The HBA has been prepared in accordance with the requirements of the National Policy Statement on Urban Development 2020 (NPS-UD).
The NPS-UD relates to spatial strategy and land use planning and requires councils to plan well for growth and ensure the delivery of a ‘well-functioning urban environment’ for all people, communities and future generations.
In particular, the NPS-UD requires local authorities to provide sufficient plan-enabled, infrastructure-ready, and commercially feasible development capacity so that more homes can be built in response to demand.
Council’s HBA complies with the requirement for Tier 2 territorial authorities to assess current housing shortfalls and the demand for housing and for business land in urban environments in the short (3 years), medium (10 years) and long term (30 years) – the Housing Bottom Lines.
The HBA takes into account short, medium and long-term projections for population growth and resulting increase in households, and increase in jobs filled and resulting demand for urban business-zoned land.
The key recommendations of the HBA include:
- Supporting the need for intensification plan change
- Re-zoning Fenton Street to a more intensive mixed-use zoning
- Providing more infrastructure-served, feasible greenfield land
- Ensuring that the CBD is an attractive place to invest, do business & live
- That Council continues to seek funding to help alleviate storm water constraints
- That Council considers zoning more land for light industrial use.
The NPS-UD requires that following the adoption of the HBA, Council also notifies the Ministry for the Environment of any housing shortfalls and incorporates Housing Bottom Lines into the District Plan and Regional Policy Statement.
The HBA identifies that Council has a housing shortfall of:
- 1890 dwellings in the short term (including unmet demand of 1500 dwellings).
- 1400 dwellings in the medium term (including the unmet demand of 1500 dwellings)
- 3630 dwellings in the long term
Where there is a housing shortfall Council is required to undertake a plan change and/or consider other options for increasing capacity or enabling development.
Work is already underway on a plan change to enable more housing (PC9), which must be notified by 20 August 2022.
Elected members were reminded of the large range of initiatives that have already been put in place to help enable development under the ‘He Papakainga, He Hapori, Taurikura Te Poupou Rautaki – The Homes and Thriving Communities Strategic Framework’, and the 30-Year Infrastructure Strategy.
The report to the Committee also outlined how Council will further respond to the findings of the HBA by developing a Future Development Strategy (FDS), which is required to be in place to inform the 2024 Long-term Plan. The FDS will outline a high level approach for achieving a well-functioning urban environment. The strategy will specify where and how sufficient development capacity will be provided to meet future growth needs over the next 30 years. This will also inform Council’s 30 year Infrastructure strategy, setting out the how and where both development infrastructure and additional infrastructure will be delivered over the short, medium and long term.
The Housing Bottom Lines to be included in the District Plan if the HBA is adopted are as follows:
- Short Term (3 years 2020-2023): additional 3,560 dwellings
- Medium Term (10 years 2020-2030): additional 6,240 dwellings
- Long Term (30 years 2020-2050): an additional 9,740 dwellings
Housing bottom lines for the short to medium term are the amount of feasible, reasonably expected to be realised development capacity that must be enabled to meet demand, plus a competitiveness margin of 20%. The housing bottom lines for the long term is the same assessment extended out from 2030 – 2050, and with a 15% competitiveness margin.
The Bay of Plenty Regional Council also needs to include the Housing Bottom Lines for all Tier 1 and 2 Councils in its Regional Policy Statement.
Council’s DCE – District Development, Jean-Paul Gaston, said the HBA, a highly technical and robust report, affirmed the significant amount of work done over the preceding five years – council’s original Spatial Plan, plus work completed with the Ministry of Housing and Urban Development on place based assessments and deficit of homes – and clearly sets out what needs to be achieved.
View the full agenda, attachments, and presentations from today’s meeting HERE on Council’s website.
The meeting was livestreamed and you can access the recording of the meeting via THIS LINK.