Building consents policy comes home to roost

The Auckland anniversary floods have brought renewed calls from Auckland councillors for a review of Council’s policies around granting building consents in hazardous areas.

At the Planning, Environment and Parks committee on February 9, Cr Chris Darby said Council’s latest monthly housing update showed that in the past year, 10 per cent of new dwelling consents were in hazard zones.

The latest February report showed 214 dwellings consented in December were within hazard zones, 16 per cent of dwelling consents for the month.

“It is a wake-up (call). We have got to act on this information,” Darby said.

“The rolling average of consents granted in hazard zones in the past 12 months was 2358. Those hazard zones are flood plains, flood-prone areas, inundation zones and erosion zones.”

He said thousands of people may have moved into hazard zones without understanding what that meant.

Darby said he had tried to grapple with the way the floods had been described.

“I have heard words like ‘unprecedented’, ‘one in 200’, ‘nothing we could have done could have prevented this’, and I have been saying to myself all those descriptions are not appropriate.”

He said the descriptions sounded like an excuse.

Cr Mike Lee asked Council officers if it was possible to pause the consenting process because of Auckland’s State of Emergency.

Chief of strategy Megan Tyler said she was unaware if there were emergency provisions that would enable Council to trump the Resource Management Act.

Cr Sharon Stewart said she had been a broken record with her concerns around flooding.

“I said one day it is going to come home to bite; we are allowing development to go on flood plains. (I said) it is going to happen and it has happened,” Stewart said.

Several councillors suggested Auckland needed a moratorium on building consents in flood-prone areas.

Mayor Wayne Brown expressed concern about Aucklanders “lawyering up” to transfer blame to Council for the floods.

“There are a number of places where we have seen inappropriate forms of construction and inappropriate intensification efforts in valleys,” he said.

He said there were developments that were turned down by Council, but developers could override Council by going to the Environment Court.

Megan Tyler said that the policy settings that allowed building consents in hazard zones might need to change.

“We are looking at those policy settings because maybe the settings in the Unitary Plan or in our design standards are not good enough anymore,” Tyler said.

Council staff will report back to committee on March 2 with the scope of the Auckland anniversary floods investigation and its next steps.