Going for Housing Growth Pillar 1: Summary of submissions now available
Published 11 Dec 25
We’ve released a summary of the submissions we received on our discussion paper ‘Going for Housing Growth: providing for urban development in the new resource management system’.
The Going for Housing Growth programme is part of the Government’s broader plan to tackle Aotearoa New Zealand’s ongoing housing shortage.
Going for Housing Growth is structured around three pillars that make system changes to address the underlying causes of the housing supply shortage. Pillar 1 seeks to free up land for urban development and remove unnecessary planning barriers.
Between June and August 2025, we worked with the Ministry for the Environment – Manatū Mō Te Taiao to ask the public about their views on how previous Cabinet decisions on Going for Housing Growth Pillar 1 could be incorporated into the new resource management system.
The high-level decisions taken by Cabinet in 2024 included:
- Introducing new housing growth targets for Tier 1 and 2 councils, requiring them to enable 30 years of feasible housing capacity in district plans
- Strengthening intensification requirements for Tier 1 councils
- Providing for a greater mix of uses (such as allowing dairies and cafes close to where people live) across urban environments
- Removing rural-urban boundary lines from planning documents
- Investigating options to require councils to spatially plan for 50 years of growth (up from 30) and be more responsive to private plan changes, and
- Prohibiting councils from setting minimum floor area or balcony requirements.
The discussion document received a total of 227 submissions from a range of people and groups including individuals and business, local government, developers, hapū, iwi, Māori and community and industry groups.
Submitters largely supported the intent of Pillar 1 of Going for Housing Growth, as well as the intent for a more enabling and streamlined planning system that increases certainty and reduces housing and development costs.
Feedback received through submissions is being used to develop the new planning system. This includes the Planning Bill and the Natural Environment Bill, which were introduced to Parliament on 9 December 2025, as well as forthcoming national policy direction and national standards.
The Government intends to pass the Planning Bill and Natural Environment Bill into law in 2026. Public consultation on the Bills is likely to open before the end of the year, and we encourage you to make a submission.
