Plan Change 39 – Residential Building Coverage

Background

The current residential building coverage for most residential environments is 30%. Plan change 39 seeks to increase this standard to 35% for the Residential and Nukuhau General Residential Environments. Building Coverage is the amount of space that your house can take up on your section.

This increase is responding to the way people are choosing to live, such as larger families looking to live together out of necessity or cultural reasons. This is resulting in landowners seeking larger buildings subsequently requiring resource consent to exceed building coverage. Resource consent is generally granted for applications exceeding the maximum site coverage, therefore this process is creating unnecessary additional costs and adding time to the development process.