Image Sally Hughes

Auckland’s councillors have been given something of a concession by RMA Reform Minister Chris Bishop over sweeping new plans for intensification.

It follows a legislated requirement for Auckland Council to come up with a zoning plan for 2 million additional homes in the supercity by October 10 - an issue which has prompted tense debates amid the local election about where and how to add to the city’s housing stock over the next 30 years.

While the council is still required to notify the public of its proposed plan change by deadline, Bishop gave his assurances on Tuesday that the council would be given the time to allow the public to have its say.

In a letter to Mayor Wayne Brown and councillor Richard Hills, Bishop said he was looking at setting an 18-month timeframe for the process.

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For some the concession has not gone far enough - Sally Hughes of the Character Coalition said the question remained: “Why do we need that level of intensification all at once?”. “We don’t need the potential for 2 million properties all at once.”

Hughes argued for “staged intensification”.

“There’s a whole derelict shopping centre down the bottom end of Dominion Road [in Mt Roskill] … that could be great apartment buildings with commercial properties underneath.

“If the community had felt that it had had a say about where the intensification went, there wouldn't have been all these angry meetings and all this upset.”

Hughes said the decision to appoint panels and hold hearings was a win for “people power”, with suburban residents having made it “patently obvious how unhappy they were” with Bishop.

“But it hasn’t won completely,” she added.

“In suburbs with a lot of villas and family homes there will still be the potential for that pepper potting and high rise buildings just plonked in the middle of a suburban street where people have lived for many years.”

“That is still possible with the amount of intensification that the Government is requiring all at once.”

Councillors will vote on notifying the proposed plan on September 24.

Parnell is one of the suburbs targeted for intensification under Auckland Council's replacement plan change. Photo David White, Stuff Sept 2025

fast facts

• Auckland councillors have no legal way to stop zoning for two million new dwellings next week.

• A vote will take place at the policy and planning meeting on September 24.

• Changes can be made through a submission process, but the requirement for two million new dwellings will remain.

Auckland must make room for two million more homes - whether city councillors like it or not.

They will get a vote, but it won’t be to reject the Government’s requirement for introducing zoning for the extra dwellings.

Their only choices will be to back one of two options for achieving the significant intensification - or to not vote at all.

On September 24, members of the policy and planning committee will vote whether to press ahead with Plan Change 78 (PC78), rules that allow three-storey buildings across most of the city, including in flood-prone areas.

Alternatively they can support a replacement set of rules allowing 10- and 15-storey blocks of apartments in selected areas, often those with good public transport.

The latter has proved contentious in recent weeks, with public meetings in suburbs like Mt Eden, Parnell and Remuera well-attended by residents concerned about towers springing up next to their house.

But PC78 is also unpopular.

The options are designed to meet the Government requirement for increased housing capacity in New Zealand’s biggest city. It’s being spearheaded by Housing Minister Chris Bishop.

Bishop confirmed to Stuff that the law states the council has to inform him which option they want by October 10.

Photo: Ricky Wilson, Stuff, 13 September 2025

David Seymour has pushed back at claims that opposition to 15-storey apartments in Parnell and other parts of Auckland is scaremongering, saying he is responding directly to the concerns of his Epsom constituents.

The council votes on September 24 on whether to press ahead with replacing Plan Change 78, which could rezone large swaths of Auckland for apartments up to 50 metres high.

Critics, including the left-leaning City Vision council group, say politicians are whipping up fear about intensification by saying that millions more people will flock to the city, overwhelming the current infrastructure.

“Unfortunately, there has been a lot of inaccurate information being shared, which is undermining this important public conversation,” Albert-Eden Puketāpapa councillor Julie Fairey said.

“At a residents’ meeting in Mt Albert, a constituent asked me when council would be taking her house.

Over the past week, Seymour has held meetings in his Epsom constituency to talk to concerned residents. In Parnell, one of Auckland’s oldest suburbs, the plan would allow blocks of up to 15 storeys. Seymour says the proposal would fundamentally alter the character of the area and stretch infrastructure already under strain.

“My job as a local MP is to make sure people understand what is happening, what the process for making decisions is, and who makes the decisions, so that people can be heard and advocate for their interests.”

Michael Neill has watched Mt Eden change since the early 1970s, from a “rundown area” to a suburb where families plant trees, fight for parks and feel fiercely protective of their streets.

Now, as Auckland Council weighs up proposed planning rules which would allow 15-storey tower blocks across the suburb and far beyond, he and his neighbours are speaking up about what they fear could be lost — and how change should be done.

“I moved here in 1973. This was a rundown area. I'd been renting in Parnell, and that was an area that was slowly moving up,” Neill says.

“It's hard to believe how undesirable inner-city Auckland was considered to be in those days. This was the only area in inner-city Auckland, reasonably close to where I was teaching, that was feasible. “It was only after I lived here for a while that I began to appreciate the kind of neighbourhood it was and might become.”

The proposed rules are a revision to Plan Change 78, the guidelines for housing intensification in Auckland.

They’ve prompted heated debate across the city, with David Seymour organising public meetings in Parnell and Remuera.

The revised plan change would significantly level up what can be built - and where. The government is insisting on the council creating rules that would allow the building of 2 million new homes.