Articles by Matthew Gilligan.
We got a good result this month, pushing back on Auckland Council's egregious development contributions charges which were proposed last year.
I, along with Kirsty Merriman (developer), Simon O'Connor from Sentinel Planning, and the team at SANZ (www.sanz.nz, which Kirsty and I lead as a non-profit advocacy group), proved that Auckland Council’s proposed development contributions (DCs) were based on utterly misleading forecasts, and flawed economic policy.
On top of this, Auckland Council’s proposals breached the Local Government Act and were therefore illegal (in our view and in the view of our King’s Counsel whom we hired to review). We were ready to sue them and prove it, but in what might be an unprecedented turn of events, Auckland Council backed down and implemented (for the most part) much smaller DC increases instead of their proposed absurdly high increases (up to 400% in some areas). This is illustrated in the table below:
It is heartening to demonstrate that when a community works together, positive change can be achieved. Changing the mind of something as big as Auckland Council is no small feat, but SANZ, along with other advocacy groups, brought together developers, consultants, housing providers and investors, and proved it is possible. We successfully challenged the proposed development contributions, which would have unfairly burdened today's homebuyers with exorbitant costs for future infrastructure. Common sense won at the end of the day. (What is alarming is that it didn’t appear to exist beforehand.)
How did we do it?
Have a read of Kirsty Merriman’s post on LinkedIn, which explains exactly how we did it. But in a nutshell:
We want to thank everyone who helped in our campaign, whether it was providing information, knowledge, support, or by making donations to fund the experts we employed to assist us. Special thanks to Andrew Barker (King's Counsel) for his legal work, and the team from Urban Economics (policy advisers).
However, this is not the end of the story. Despite substantial revisions, challenges remain, and the Council's stance on cost-sharing between ratepayers and developers is concerning. We will continue to keep the pressure on to try and ensure a fair result for all Aucklanders.
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