Plan Change 19 is one new tool that the Central Otago district now has to help address its housing problems.

Signed off by the CODC on Wednesday, Mayor Tim Cadogan said Plan Change 19 (PC19) had been a massive undertaking with a significant outcome, and would allow for further intensification of land in the area.

“We have talked about our housing problem in Central Otago for as long as I have been sitting here, and this is a practical move to address these problems.”

Plan Change 19 was first publicly notified in July 2022 and attracted 170 submissions.

Hearings then began in April 26, 2023 and a decision was made by the panel at the end of March this year.

It affects what some Central Otago residents can do with their land in Cromwell, Clyde and Alexandra, and has been driven by the direction set out in the Vincent and Cromwell Spatial Plans. 

The spatial plans were prepared by council to respond to demand for residential land and housing affordability concerns in the district, and to plan for the anticipated growth over the next 30 years.

It sets out the way the district’s residential areas are zoned and managed, including new areas for residential use, identifying some areas for future growth, and includes new provisions for managing land use and subdivisions within the residential zones.

PC 19 aligns changes around density and allows for smaller sections in some areas and therefore more houses, and also new residential areas in the Cromwell and Vincent wards (around Alexandra, Clyde and Cromwell).

The panel found in the Large Lot Residential Zone (LLRZ) in some of the outer lying areas there were some wider servicing constraints to developing these areas that must be addressed before they were able to be developed. 

In the Low Density Residential Zone (LDRZ), which currently provides for traditional suburban housing with ample open spaces, some commercial and community facilities are anticipated - where they support the local residential population.

Deputy Mayor Neil Gillespie who led the panel, said it had been a challenging process to work through, and this was just the tip of the iceberg for further plan changes as they moved ahead as a council. 

There will be another round of appeals on PC19 that will deal more with legalities “and then we’ll have some certainty,” he said.