Going for Housing Growth: Providing for urban development in the new resource management system

Current status and case for change

Spatial planning is a core tool for aligning housing and infrastructure planning and investment. By making the big strategic decisions up front, spatial planning can identify and better integrate where and when future development capacity and infrastructure is expected to be provided, and support appropriate infrastructure project selection, which will provide confidence to the market about the future supply of developable land.

At present, the NPS-UD requires Tier 1 and 2 councils to prepare future development strategies (FDS) – which are a form of a spatial plan focusing on urban growth. Auckland Council was also required to prepare a spatial plan under the Local Government (Auckland Council) Act 2009. Outside of this, there is no legislative framework for spatial planning.

More than 80 spatial plans have been prepared in New Zealand over the last 20 years, many of which sit outside the FDS framework. The Resource Management Expert Advisory Group (RM EAG) has identified several limitations with spatial planning in New Zealand, including:

• significant variation in approach and quality of spatial plans
• a lack of consistent and robust data and other spatial inputs
• a lack of legal weight on regulatory, transport and funding plans, which limits the ability to integrate and coordinate land-use planning, infrastructure planning and investment
• variable involvement of central government in spatial planning
• insufficient implementation programmes to coordinate multiple parties to deliver projects and other actions identified in spatial plans, including inconsistency in the level of detail and approach to prioritisation.

Summary of proposals

The RM EAG identified a key role for spatial planning in the new resource management system. In line with its recommendations, Cabinet has agreed that:

• the new system will include long-term strategic spatial planning to simplify and streamline the system, enable development within environmental constraints, and have sufficient weight to better align land use and infrastructure planning and investment
• spatial planning requirements will sit under the Planning Act, but be designed to help integrate decisions under the Planning Act and Natural Environment Act at a strategic level, resolving conflicts where possible
• spatial planning will promote integration of regulatory planning under the Planning Act and Natural Environment Act with infrastructure planning and investment
• spatial plans will have a strong focus on enabling urban development and infrastructure within environmental constraints.

One option is that each region be required to have a spatial plan but with flexibility for local authorities to focus on specific parts of the region and to plan across regional boundaries.

Spatial planning under the Planning Act is intended to replace the role of FDS in the current system.

FDS are currently prepared by local authorities, with requirements to engage with other groups, such as central government, infrastructure providers and iwi and hapū. Ministers will consider how different groups, including local and central government should be involved in the process of spatial planning.  

Spatial planning requirements are intended to build on and learn from current practice relating to FDS. Compared to FDS, we envisage that spatial planning in the new system will involve:

• stronger weight on regulatory, transport and funding plans – spatial planning will have strong weight on land use plans so strategic decisions made through spatial planning flow through to regulatory decisions. Spatial planning will also inform funding plans to improve integration of land use planning with infrastructure planning and investment.
• a longer time horizon – FDS are only required to have a time horizon of 30 years. Under a 30-year spatial planning horizon, with housing growth targets (discussed further below) requiring councils to enable 30 years of development capacity immediately, spatial plans would have little or no role to play in identifying where and when development capacity should be provided (because it would largely already be enabled). We’re therefore considering whether the planning horizon should be at least 30 years, with matters such as the location of strategic infrastructure corridors and other sites should be considered over a time span of up to 50 years.
• better use of information and evidence – compared to FDS requirements, we propose to expand the list of matters that must inform spatial planning to include information about demand, cost and supply of infrastructure, opportunities to make better use of existing infrastructure, and an expectation that stakeholders who may be involved in implementing the spatial plan are able to provide information to inform its preparation (including infrastructure providers, developers and landowners).
• minimum infrastructure content requirements – this includes the type of infrastructure required to support a growth area and whether it’s needed in the short, medium or long term. It also includes flexibility to set an infrastructure prerequisite that specifies the infrastructure projects or service level needed for a growth area to be ‘development ready’.
• stronger and more consistent requirements for implementation plans – this may include requiring implementation plans to include a list of critical actions, the relative priority of each action, who is responsible for each action, any dependencies between actions, phasing or funding status, how they will be undertaken and who needs to be involved.
• requirements for councils to identify priority development areas in implementation plans - the focus would be on encouraging the identification of areas that offer the best opportunity to integrate land use and infrastructure to accelerate delivery of plan-enabled development capacity and coordinating across different decision-makers.