Ahead of his presentation at the The Latest Updates Impacting Subdivisions: RMA Reform, Permissions, Due Diligence & Risk Assessment webinar next month, we caught up with Phil Comer, Technical Director at Harrison Grierson, to discuss the practical realities of subdivision reform.
With planning reforms reshaping the subdivision landscape, what are the biggest shifts practitioners and developers need to understand right now?
We only have high-level Government direction to go on right now – the detail has yet to be revealed. That direction is however for streamlining of processes and national standardisation. This should create greater certainty and consistency for subdivision and development of land across Aotearoa – but this will take time to eventuate as councils work to replace their current district plans with next generation plans under the new legislation. I expect subdivision to continue to need a resource consent as it inherently defines the boundaries and ownership of land and involves legal process to achieve this.
The Government recently announced it’s ‘Going for Housing Growth’ programme which aims to tackle Aotearoa New Zealand’s housing shortage by freeing up planning barriers to urban development and improving infrastructure funding and financing.
Development contributions will be replaced by a development levy system that will allow infrastructure providers to charge developers for the overall cost of growth infrastructure across an urban area looking at the longer terms infrastructure needs of that area. Whether this unlocks more subdivision potential, or simply passes on more cost to developers, will be a question for many in the industry.
From Paper to Practice. You’ve worked on everything from resource consents to full-scale land development projects. What’s one “real-world” challenge that often surprises those new to subdivision work?
A significant challenge that varies across the country depending on which territorial authority you are dealing with is the level of detail that needs to be provided at resource consent stage for a subdivision application, especially for comprehensive resource consent applications where houses are consented concurrent with subdivision.
It is often impossible to accurately determine the number and spatial extent of all required easements in a subdivision based on house design plans prepared for a resource consent, but many councils expect you to be able to do this. At Harrison Grierson, we work through this with a council early in an application process to make sure that the level of detail provided on a scheme plan meets expectations but also enables flexibility to refine the number and spatial extent of easements during the land transfer (s223/s224 RMA) process when detailed house design has been locked in through the building consent process.
Lessons from Complex Projects. You’ve led multidisciplinary projects across residential, commercial, and industrial developments. Could you share an example where creative problem-solving or collaboration made a critical difference?
I have a current project where we are developing a design flexibility approach to the comprehensive consenting of house design typologies at resource consent stage.
Comprehensive resource consents typically lock in the house design that must be constructed on a lot, but our developer-client wants to be able to build whatever house they want to meet the very challenging market conditions.
We have developed a compliance baseline, bulk and location control baseline and a set of design conditions to achieve this and we are collaborating closely with our client and the council to ensure that the resource consent decision achieves what all parties need.
The tough residential market is increasingly driving the need for flexible consenting outcomes and, if we can get this across the line, it could provide an excellent consenting model for future projects.
Looking Ahead: Risks and Opportunities. If you could give one piece of advice to those navigating subdivision and land development over the next five years, what would it be?
Prepare for lots of changes! The pace of change will ramp up into 2026 and beyond and subdivision and land development proposals will be increasingly assessed under a dual planning system (out-going RMA and incoming new legislation) through what will be a lengthy transition period. Things will likely get more complex before any streamlining and simplification kicks in and the cost of preparing and obtaining resource consents may also increase in the short term to reflect complexity.
If you would like to hear more from Phil Comer, please register for our upcoming seminar, where he will present: The Latest Updates Impacting Subdivisions: RMA Reform, Permissions, Due Diligence & Risk Assessment
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