High-density housing backflip

By BERNARD ORSMAN

Housing New Zealand and the Auckland City Council have dropped plans to loosen the rules for high-density housing in leafy suburban areas.

The about-turn follows opposition to the plan by community and housing groups aghast at behind-closed-door talks for high-density housing on smaller sites.

A Housing New Zealand spokeswoman said public views were one reason the corporation dropped an appeal to build three, four and five-storey state housing developments on sites of less than 1ha in the new residential 8 zone.

A desire to reduce the minimum area by 10 per cent was also not essential to future projects, she said.

Without consulting the public, council planners had agreed to consider parcels of land with areas less than 1ha which met the zone requirements.

This was only months after councillors assured city residents that the new zone would be restricted to sites of 1ha or more.

Critics say the council has a poor planning record, with tacky infill housing and cheap apartment blocks blighting the city.

The new residential 8 zone, with strict controls and design rules, is an attempt to improve the landscape as the council oversees a new wave of suburban multi-storey housing.

Suburbs earmarked for rezoning are the central business district, Newmarket, Glen Innes, Panmure, Mt Wellington quarry, Remuera, Ellerslie, Sylvia Park, Grey Lynn, Pt Chevalier, Mt Albert and Onehunga. Once drainage problems are fixed, Mt Roskill, Sandringham, Morningside, Balmoral and Royal Oak will be other candidates.

The chairwoman of the city development committee, Julia Yates, welcomed the outcome after being lobbied by community and housing groups.

Mrs Yates refused to say if she had put political pressure on officers to drop the change, saying only that the process for appeals had been followed.

It was important for people to realise that the new residential 8 was a "potential" zone and it would come into effect only with the approval of local communities, she said.

A spokeswoman for the Auckland Housing Lobby, Sue Henry, said the change would have slipped through unnoticed if the matter had not been raised in the media.

"If the council are going to allow changes they should release them at the outset when the public can make submissions, not somewhere down the track," Sue Henry said.

A spokesman for the Panmure Community Action Group, Keith Sharp, was pleased the council had stuck to the original 1ha threshold for residential 8 sites.

However, he said there was still the outstanding issue of allowing smaller, non-complying sites facing each other across roads or public open space to be lumped together into a single complying block.