Environment Court Decision for Waiuku Development Considers Auckland HBA

Environment Court Decision for Waiuku Development Considers Auckland HBA

The recent Environment Court decision on Private Plan Change 73 (800 dwellings in Waiuku) identified several key areas where the Auckland Housing and Business Assessment (HBA) does not meet the requirements of the NPS-UD.  These include:

         

          1. Development capacity is estimated at the regional level but not at the local ‘location and market’ level as required by the NPS-UD/NPS- HPL:

                    “The court considers the HBA was carried out mainly at a regional level and therefore does not meet the explicit requirements of the NPS-UD…” [206]

          2. The HBA does not distinguish between greenfield and infill development capacity, which is important for understanding the housing market: 

                     “… a lack of adequate focus on the distinction between market responses to greenfield and infill development opportunities, do not provide sufficient confidence in the relevance of [the] quantitative estimates.” [222]

                     “The court would question the relevance of such data sets [household and population growth data], if they do not identify and distinguish greenfield-based trends and patterns over time from infill-based trends and patterns over time.  In this regard, the practice of                                    averaging household growth data over periods of time can mask relevant detail.” [208]

          3. That supply needs to be considered not just in terms of quantity but also in terms of price, which is a key economic principle:

                     “The relevance of this to the appropriate definition of ‘locality and market’ is associated with the fact that the proportion of dwellings in each price bracket may well differ between different markets.” [182]

In summary, the decision raises questions of whether the Auckland HBA provides a sufficient basis for understanding capacity, and highlights the importance of assessing capacity in terms of the infill-greenfield split, across a range of prices, for each individual locality and market.