Special Housing Areas on fast track

With the first Special Housing Areas in the Bay of Plenty approved, Boffa Miskell is assisting several landowners and developers through the consenting process, to enable construction as soon as possible.

Under the Housing Accords and Special Housing Areas Act 2013, special pre-application and consenting processes are available to speed up the development of approved Special Housing Areas (SHA). Boffa Miskell’s Auckland and Tauranga offices are assisting clients with SHA projects ranging from the significant Wesley Greenfield community within the Auckland Rural Urban Boundary, extending the Pukekohe satellite town with a new sister town that will in time accommodate some 4,500 to 5,000 homes, through to smaller development projects, such as the one below, that will assist in easing housing supply.

In 2014, both the Tauranga City Council and Western Bay of Plenty District Council signed Housing Accords with the Government, to increase housing supply, improve housing affordability and make provision for long-term supply of residential-zoned land. The Minister of Housing approved the first proposed Special Housing Areas for the region in February 2015.

Amongst these was a proposed 31-unit development on a 7,000 m2 site at Waihi Road, Tauranga, which PMP Developments, a subsidiary company of Classic Builders, conditionally purchased in July 2014 for development. Boffa Miskell planner and Senior Principal, Richard Coles, has been providing planning services, including information to support the application for Ministerial approval and preparing draft resource consent conditions for pre-application consideration.

“To streamline the consenting process, we started working on resource consent matters in parallel with the process of applying for the Minister’s special housing approval. This means that although there are some complex infrastructure issues in relation to this brownfield site, we were already working collaboratively with the Council to facilitate speedy resolution ahead of lodging the resource consent application.“

Richard is also assisting other clients with feasibility assessments of medium-density residential development on other approved Special Housing Areas in the region.