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New rules may test stretched officials

Liz McDonald liz.mcdonald@stuff.co.nz

Upcoming changes to housing density rules are about to send an already-overstretched Christchurch City Council consenting system into uncharted territory.

Government law changes mean the main cities must allow three residential buildings up to three storeys high on each section. The new rules take effect in Christchurch on September 23.

Staff shortages and record levels of home building in the past year have pushed waiting times for Christchurch building consents out to several months.

Applicants planning multi-unit and other non-straightforward builds are now waiting up to 14 weeks to get their paperwork looked at, according to a council update this week. Legally, consents should be processed within four weeks.

The density changes remove the requirement for resource consent for some developments but are likely to make building consenting more complex. John Higgins, head of planning and consenting at the council, said they would not know what they were dealing with until consent applications came in.

Consent applications can only be processed under current rules, not ones yet to take effect. ‘‘We don’t know if there will be an influx of applications – there will be other factors at play, like the general housing market.’’

Higgins said while construction was starting to slow as the housing market cooled, ‘‘we don’t know if it will pick up again when the new rules come into play’’. ‘‘In the past couple of years we have seen a heap of multi-unit developments.’’

Blair Chappell, co-owner of multi-unit developer Williams Corporation, said they were taking a ‘‘wait and see approach’’ to the new rules. They had not yet bought land in suburbs previously zoned for lowdensity housing but expected some developers had. Homeowners might also plan to put an extra home on their land, he said.

Chappell expected the changes would ‘‘definitely change the demand space’’. ‘‘Somewhere like Burnside – it has good schools and the airport is a big employer. It has been low-density but I think there would be pent-up demand for more affordable product.’’

Mike Blackburn, author of the Canterbury Construction Report, said demand for multi-units had dipped. ‘‘When the new rules come in, I am not expecting to see a massive jump in that type of development. I just don’t see big demand for it.’’ He said it was yet to be seen whether medium-density housing in outer suburbs would create a new market.

The record 4831 homes consented by the city council in the year to June exceeded rebuild levels and was double pre-pandemic numbers. Sixty-five per cent were in multiunit developments.

Higgins expected consenting pressures would increase next year, when further proposed changes to building density took effect.

These would allow housing up to six storeys high in suburban hubs and higher still near the central city. Building height limits inside the city centre would go altogether.

‘‘The bigger they are, the more complex they are with tougher fire protection and lifts and so on. It just depends on the number that come in,’’ Higgins said. ‘‘We just don’t know how many of those we will get and how complex, and whether we have enough of those staff.

‘‘If there is a huge boom, that will be stretching resources.’’

In a consenting update on its website this week, the council says it is training new staff while they process low-complexity building consents, and upskilling current staff to process higher-complex ones. ‘‘We are continuing to investigate other initiatives to help get us through the amount of work in front of us,’’ the site says.

While about only half of all building consents were being issued within the required 20 days, Higgins said there had been ‘‘dramatic improvement’’ in resource consenting. The development slow-down and having more consultants available had reduced the backlog of resource consent applications from 341 in April to 112 now, he said.

The council has about 20 resource consent applications on hold, ready to be processed after the September rule change.

The council was meant to have the new housing density rules in place this month but delayed them until September because of staff illness. They include exempting designated pockets due to heritage value, infrastructure constraints and coastal hazards.

National Party leader Christopher Luxon said this week the party would have another look at the controversial laws if it got into Government next year.

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2022-08-13T07:00:00.0000000Z

2022-08-13T07:00:00.0000000Z

https://fairfaxmedia.pressreader.com/article/281732683264677

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