Property Council: Bring in plan in one hit

The plan will shape the way Auckland grows and will dictate what can be built and where.

The council is considering the feedback it has received. It has been suggested that the plan could be implemented as a series of changes over many years.

Property Council chief executive Connal Townsend said the council needed to offer certainty: “Development is hard. A single project can take years to come to fruition. Absolute clarity of vision and process is required from day one– staging will create uncertainty.”

He said if the plan only allowed small changes at first, private landowners might subdivide their sections or extend their homes. That would make it much harder for the land to be bought later on for large-scale developments.

“Once a three-storey building has been built, you cannot easily go back a couple of years later or once the area is rezone and then do a six- or eight-storey block. It is simply too expensive.”