‘Townhouse bill’ restrictions set to be weakened

character of neighbourhoods and lead to slums.

The environment select committee is meeting on Thursday to discuss the bill and issue a final report.

There has been widespread speculation that National in particular might move to significantly weaken it, given ACT has been campaigning against it and some MPS have expressed their displeasure over how far it goes.

Stuff understands the changes set to be agreed on by Labour and National will result in amendments to the medium-density standard at the heart of the bill, but not a wholesale backdown to local authorities.

Councils would not be able to decide where to apply the standard, and they will not gain vastly more discretion to use arguments such as heritage to stop development.

Height restrictions in relation to boundaries will be reduced so that neighbours won’t lose as much sunlight.

But not all the changes reduce the freedom to build – the ‘‘setback’’ from the street will also be reduced, allowing buildings to get closer to the street.

Housing advocates urged National to stay the course on Wednesday after comments by new deputy leader Nicola Willis about local authorities needing ‘‘more discretion’’ worried them.

Eric Crampton, from the New

Zealand Initiative, said losing the bipartisan consensus could encourage bad development.

‘‘If everyone expects that the next National government would repeal the legislation, that creates a strong incentive to get buildings built before councils regain easy ability to block new development,’’ Crampton said.

The bill has been attacked and supported from both the right and left. ACT has been strongly campaigning against the measure, arguing councils need more funding to build the necessary infrastructure and that the deregulation would create ‘‘chaos’’ as people bought into neighbourhoods not expecting the rules to suddenly change.