National Policy Statement – Urban Development (2020)

The National Policy Statement on Urban Development (NPS-UD) is now in place, replacing the NPS-UDC which had been in effect since September 2016.

The NPS-UD is part of the Urban Growth Agenda, and a key purpose is to drive down the price of urban land, in order to improve housing affordability. It aims to achieve this by requiring councils to adopt and implement policies affecting urban form and land use outcomes, setting requirements to ensure there is sufficient capacity for housing and business growth into the long term, and monitoring to help ensure that land and development markets in the main cities are working efficiently.

Anticipating its release, M.E has put considerable resource into enhancing the assessment tools required by the NPS-UD, focusing on the key areas for council compliance – the Housing HBA (Housing Development Capacity Assessment) by mid-2021 and the Business Development Capacity Assessment by 2024; specialised approaches to assess housing market performance and the effects of councils’ planning and infrastructure provision, and address housing affordability; and methods to design, assess and implement the intensification policies which are now directed by the NPS. In parallel, we have developed a range of monitoring tools, with which councils will need to comply under the NPS-UD, and the technical guidance now released by MfE.

These developments have been alongside M.E’s ongoing research into housing markets and business development throughout the country, supported by significant investment to define and assemble the specialised datasets which offer an extensive evidence base to calibrate and confirm the technical capabilities. The availability (from September 2020) of finalised datasets from Census 2018 means that we now have all the necessary ducks in a row to support the effort demanded by the NPS-UD.

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M.E NPS-UD Economic Assessment Framework (2475 KB)