The Unitary Plan
As this campaign unfolds I become more and more despondent with the duplicity of some politicians. I've tried to see how someone could justify the statement that the Unitary Plan will remove the Urban Limit and therefore open up more land for affordable housing to be created quickly. Yet in another situation say the Unitary Plan was so complex with so many new rules it will make development prohibitive. I can only come up with the assumption that this is a case of giving a different story to different audiences for the sole purpose of harvesting votes.
The only thing I am sure of about the Unitary Plan is it will cause a huge increase in everyone's costs when attempting to get consent for anything. It is so complex it will take the workload for consultants to a whole new level.
Here are some facts about the Unitary Plan and the process it went through.
- The Unitary Plan is a book of rules for what can be done and built in 4,894 square kilometre Auckland region
- The submission period lasted 6 months, making it the city's most extensive submission period in history
- An independent hearings panel of 11 people appointed by the Environment Minister and Conservation Minister
- It has been considering a 6961 page proposed plan written by Auckland Council
- It has received 9443 public submissions in the first round of submission and 3951 further submissions in the second round
- A total of 249 public meetings were held and a total of 21,210 pieces of written feedback were received
- The panel considered 1,493,600 separate submission points on the plan, making it one of the largest democratic processes in New Zealand history
- The panel held 249 days of hearings on 70 topics over 21 months
- It sat through over 4000 appearances by submitters and received over 10,000 pieces of evidence
And now this is near finished we haven't sacked the 1500 planners, history tells me they're about to start another plan.
