Recent ICW documents and activity:

Lifeboat Building workshop. February 2025

• In February 2025, representatives from ICW, WREMO (Welliington Regional Emergency Management Office) and a group of local residents from a range of inner-city apartment buidings met to begin a process of ensuring emergency management planning take into account the different needs of those living in apartment buildings. Unlike single unit title residential buildings - such as houses and town houses etc - where an owner can make autonomous decisions, those living in multi-unit title residential buildings (aka ‘apartment buildings’) rely on collective decision-making processes involving the ‘body corporate’. This reality is not meaningfully reflected in emergency planning advice. This workshop has begun a process to try and address that.
  

• Oral Submission to the Draft District Plan 2024
  ICW Chair, Rev Stephen King, spoke to the Draft District Plan, emphasising the need for proposed intensification of the inner-city be accompanied by essential community amenities, including the need for increased green space, consideration of emergency response needs, and support for community building activities.
  

MBIE letter on proposed energy performance ratings for large apartment buildings (23 Feb 2023)

• The response from MBIE to a request from ICW associate, Geraldine Murphy, for information about energy ratings and waste minimisation plans proposed for the Building Act.

Wellington City Council - Draft District Plan

• The Council’s Spatial Plan informed the draft District Plan. In October 2020, we provided this submission with our feedback, ideas and suggestions.
  Read our submission here

• ICW believes that a regulated maximum population density per hectare for a mesh block is essential so that monitoring could ensure consent is not given to any new build or conversion that would result in that maximum being exceeded. The following presentation is a sample of current mesh block population density levels in Te Aro which are already unacceptably high in relation to the inadequate infrastructure, and critical lack of green space and amenities provided in the area.
  Read our report here

______________

• Wellington City Council - Te Ngākau Civic Precinct Framework

  • The Te Ngākau Civic Square area plays a key part in inner-city life, so we are closely following the plans for its development. Read our May 2021 submission to the Framework here.

  • ICW responded when the Council worked on to developing a plan for Te Ngākau-Civic Square as a whole, and asked for a framework to be developed to return the council’s main buildings to the square, while developing it as the musical, creative and democratic heart of the city”. Read our submission here

_____________

• Central Government - Unit Titles (Strengthening body corporate governance and other matters) Amendment Bill

  •  ICW provided a submission focusing on issues identified through ICW’s research on the earthquake-prone buildings legislation (specifically, on owners in multi-owner residential buildings) and how these impact on governance arrangements and long-term maintenance plans.
    Read our submission here

_____________

• Wellington City Council - Central Library, Te Mataphihi

  • ICW had the opportunity to submit our perspective on the future of our Central City Library Te Matapihi. We outlined our preference and explained our belief how the money invested would provides the City and our Community with the best value for money in both the short and long term.
    Read our submission here

______________

• ICW Walkabout with WCC - Density Issues

  • ICW is not against density but we want quality of life considered as a fundamental first. This document resulted from walking the inner-city with a group of City Councillors, and serves to identify key ingredients for ‘density done well’
    Read the document here