With National winning the general election, we can expect much of the same for the next three
years.
Resource
Management Act changes
This will no doubt include
further reforms to the Resource Management Act 1991 (RMA), largely tipped to
include a strengthening of economic development policy as well as potential
changes following the recent King Salmon decision in the Supreme Court. However, legislation reforms is only
one part of the puzzle and while such reforms are likely to have an effect on
large nation building projects and housing supply, it only has a limited effect
on the smaller scale projects that people so often complain about being delayed
by the RMA. These are more likely
to be affected by how the RMA is implemented by Councils across New Zealand.
Central Government has been
aware of this for some time, having introduced new polices and performance
monitoring for local authorities that placed greater expectations and scrutiny
on how Councils were implementing the RMA through processing resource consents
and private plan changes. But
improved numbers and KPIs only tell half the story and don’t drive a
behavioural change that still needs to occur in some Councils where the siege mentality
that many of their staff developed during the mid-2000s has been retained. Rightly or wrongly this mentality was a
way of managing extremely high workloads, staff shortages and preventing dodgy
developments. But this has proved
to be a difficult mentality to shake in an environment of relative low activity,
and where Central Government is striving to jump start the economy outside of
Auckland and Christchurch into sustainable growth again.
Housing
Project Office
It’s in this context where the recently created Housing Project
Office (HPO) could prove to be a shining light, and which could be viewed by
Central Government as being the new modus operandi for Councils across the
country.
The HPO was established by
Auckland Council in 2013 as a response to Auckland’s housing crisis and operates
under the Auckland Housing Accord.
It seems to have a clear
directive to be solutions focused, make robust decisions and requires high
quality urban environments but all the while with a focus on results rather than sticklers on process and ticking boxes. The
HPO is a breath of fresh air and
already there are impressive results. It wouldn’t be a surprise if they are
seen by Central Government as a perfect guinea pig to test whether this change
in focus and behaviour leads to improved housing supply. In the regions they could be seen as one
way of removing the barriers to economic activity and sustainable growth.
But for now we will have to wait
to see what the returning government has in store for the RMA, and whether
reforms also stretch to applying the HPO blueprint so that it becomes the
standard way that all Councils operate.
Nick Grala,
Senior Planner / Senior Associate
25 September 2014
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