Housing bottom lines

The National Policy Statement on Urban Development 2020 (NPS-UD) came into force on 20 August 2020. The NPS-UD requires councils to plan well for growth and ensure a well-functioning urban environment for all people, communities and future generations.


About this plan change

One objective of the NPS-UD is to ensure that councils have robust and frequently updated information about their urban environments and use that information to inform planning decisions. To achieve this, Hutt City Council conducts a regular Housing and Business Capacity Assessment to determine the amount of required capacity for housing and business development. Read the most recent assessment.

Policy 7 of the NPS-UD requires Hutt City Council to set “housing bottom lines” in its district plan. This is a statement of the minimum number of additional dwellings that Hutt City needs to enable in its district plan in the next 3, 10, and 30 years. The housing bottom lines do not directly affect any provision of the plan and there are no changes to rules or resource consent requirements. However, as the current District Plan does not provide sufficient development capacity, Hutt City needs to prepare a separate plan change to provide more capacity. This is being done through proposed Plan Change 56.

Clause 3.6 of the NPS-UD provides further direction on implementing Policy 11. Under Clause 3.6 of the NPS-UD, the housing bottom lines are inserted without using the normal Schedule 1 process.
At its 5 July 2022 meeting, Council made the decision to amend the District Plan to insert housing bottom lines. These housing bottom lines can be found in Section 1.10.3A of the Plan.

Key dates

Operative 4 August 2022 Public Notice (PDF 129kb)

More Information

Read the National Policy Statement on Urban Development.