The housing and infrastructure minister says he can’t legally pause fast-tracked housing developments.
The mayors of Auckland and Queenstown have called for an immediate pause on developments, including one that lacks water infrastructure.
Minister Chris Bishop told Morning Report that would require a law change.
“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.”
Bishop said the fast-track system was designed to facilitate developments that are out of sequence, so the system was working as intended.
He said he had the ability to refer projects in and was conscious of their concerns.
“If they apply and they work their way through the system, I have to take advice on all of the projects,” Bishop said.
“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.
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“So, they will be consulted as part of that process.”
Bishop acknowledged that it was complicated.
When there’s development that was out of sequence or out of phase, as the councils liked to put it, it’s beyond the boundaries that they expected development to happen, he said.
“At the moment, when someone applies for a fast-track project, the development contributions that developers pay for infrastructure is essentially locked in when the application happens,” Bishop said.
“Now, if it’s an out of sequence development, those development contributions can often be quite low, right?
“Because the council didn’t anticipate development there, ad so there’s been a couple of examples of that and there’s more potentially coming, and so we have decided that that’s a legitimate point that councils are making.
“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.”
It’s about growth paying for growth, which was a core government philosophy and locking that principle in even further than it already was, he said.
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