Press Release
26th September 2025

Auckland Council votes for a new Plan Change

Sally Hughes, Chair, Character Coalition, takes up the story.

Background

At its meeting on Wednesday 24th September, Auckland Council’s Planning Committee faced a stark and unpalatable choice. Should it stick with Plan Change 78, and the unpopular “Medium Density Residential Standards”, or agree to withdraw it and agree to notify a replacement Plan Change instead?

The Government has placed Auckland Council in an impossible position. Having taken almost two years to pass the legislation allowing Council to withdraw Plan Change 78, and finally having done so on 16 August, it gave Council only until 10 October to decide. There was absolutely no need for this arbitrary deadline. The result has been that Council had no time to consult with Aucklanders before producing its replacement plan change, even though it will completely change the face of our city.
Not only that, but the legislation tightly constrained Council’s ability to decide what is in its replacement plan change. It requires Council to:
Zone land for more than 2 million dwellings in its residential zones
Allow buildings at least 15 storeys high in a walkable catchment of Morningside, Kingsland and Maungawhau Stations
Allow buildings at least 10 storeys high in a walkable catchment of Mt Albert and Baldwin Ave Stations
To meet these requirements, Council has produced a proposed new plan, to be known as Plan Change 120 (PC 120) which will re-zones vast areas of the Isthmus and our suburbs for Terraced Housing and Apartment building up to fifteen, ten or six storeys high. You can see this plan and the maps, on the large file attachments either by searching for the Policy and Planning Committee's September Agenda at Council's Agendas and Minutes Portal.
Predictably, this has caused a public uproar as people have learnt what is happening. We convened a public meeting in Mt Eden on 28 August. So many came that people had to be turned away. Since then, there have been several other meetings around Auckland, all well-attended by people who are outraged at what is happening to our city.
There has been a lot of media coverage of this issue. As Spokesperson for Character Coalition, I have been interviewed by several radio, TV, and newspaper journalists. Check this out on our website. https://charactercoalition.org.nz/
We have made our position clear. We support intensification in the city centre, in metropolitan centres (e.g. Takapuna, Newmarket and Henderson), around railways stations and along main transport routes. But it must be properly planned and located, not randomly dispersed throughout our suburbs. There must be the necessary infrastructure to support it – drainage, schools, parks, roading – and this must be in place before it occurs. That is not what will happen with this proposal. High rise apartments will be allowed where there is no adequate infrastructure or community facilities for the people who will live in them. This is a recipe for social disruption, an unhealthy and poor-quality living environment and the slums of the future.

Council Decision

The Council decided yesterday to withdraw PC78 and replace it with PC120.
Some Councillors tried to get the notification of the replacement plan change (PC78) deferred. They wanted Council to go back to the Government and ask for more time to consult with Aucklanders so Council could devise a better plan change which would enable properly planned intensification. However, they were unsuccessful, and the PC120 will now be notified for public submissions on 30 October.
We think that deferring the notification was a good idea. There is no need for the rushed process that the Minister is trying to impose and unfortunately most Councillors have now accepted.
The thirteen Councillors who voted to go ahead and notify PC120 without allowing more time for public consultation on it were the Mayor and Crs Baker, Bartley, Dalton, Darby, Fairey, Filipaina, Fuli, Henderson, Leoni, Sayers and Simpson.
The eight who supported a deferral of notification and more time for consultation were Crs Fletcher, Lee, Newman, Stewart, Turner, Walker, Watson and Williamson.

Effects

PC120 if implemented will completely ruin Auckland’s character. Our suburbs, with their extensive low-rise housing and family homes, will have high rise apartment blocks thrown up randomly in their midst.
Fortunately, Council can still exempt our Special Character Areas (SCAs) from the high-rise requirements.
However, under PC120 the number of properties with SCA protection will be reduced from 21,200 in the Unitary Plan to 15,367 – a reduction of almost 6,000 properties The primary areas affected are Kingsland, northern Mt Eden, St. Mary’s Bay, Freemans Bay, eastern Parnell and Remuera. The removal of these SCAs, most of which were protected in successive Council plans for many years, is completely unnecessary, and Character Coalition will be vigorously opposing it.

Next Steps

Proposed PC120 will be open for written submissions until 19 December 2025. Character Coalition will be making a submission opposing the removal of any SCAs and asking for their re-instatement.
Our submission will include that:
Our SCAs are of international significance, and an essential part of Auckland’s identity.
The requirement to zone for more than two million more homes (or over a hundred years' future supply) is completely over the top. It is both destructive and unnecessary. Auckland already has an oversupply of residential zoned land. Adding to that supply will make no difference to housing availability or affordability.
Intensification must be planned and located to align with future population growth and infrastructure needs.
Character Coalition will prepare a template submission and circulate that to our member groups in mid-November to help groups and individuals make their own submissions. The more of you that make submissions, the better.
A Panel (which may or may not be the same Panel appointed for PC78) will then hear submissions next year and report its findings. Character Coalition has already engaged two economists and a planner to prepare expert evidence for the Panel. This may reduce the need for our member groups, to engage their own experts in those fields, as they will be able to rely on that evidence in support of their own cases.
This appalling process, started by the last Government in 2021 and carried on by this one, has already cost our communities a huge amount of time and money. By the time it ends (if it ever does) in 2028, it will have been seven years and untold millions more.
Councils know their communities and their cities best. This shamble is what happens when Governments don’t leave planning decisions to Councils and instead try to micro-manage city planning from a centralised bureaucracy in Wellington. It is an indictment on both the last and the present Government.