More Canberra blocks set to allow dual occupancies as zone rules shift to boost housing supply

Chief Minister Andrew Barr on Monday did not rule out widespread changes to the RZ1 zoning, which limits most suburban areas to single detached houses, in an updated territory plan.

Mr Barr said RZ1 would continue to exist as a residential zone and foreshadowed further announcements next week.

"What's allowed in RZ1 is likely to change in a way that is consistent with the path of gentle urbanism that I've been talking about for many years now," he said.

Asked if the RZ1 zone as the city knew it was dead, Mr Barr said he would not describe it in those terms.

"But I think what we need is an opportunity to see more housing built in a sustainable way that provides a range of accommodation choices in places that people want to live," Mr Barr said.

"Canberra's housing supply can't be exclusively met by greenfield development, 30 or 40 kilometres from the centres of employment and services."

Mr Barr has previously endorsed a wider expansion of the Mr Fluffy dual occupancy rules.

Expanding the rules would deliver smaller, more affordable homes in established suburbs, he has said.

Blocks where houses were demolished under the Mr Fluffy loose-fill asbestos insulation buy-back program were allowed to have a dual occupancy development if the site was more than 700 square metres in the RZ1 zone.

"There's a way to do this that would address legitimate concerns about neighbourhoods changing dramatically, but at the same time offer more product and a house size that's 100 to 150 square metres, so equivalent to a three-bedroom apartment probably, but at a single level, in a gentle transformation of some of the larger blocks in places where people want to live," Mr Barr said in March.

The current objectives for the RZ1 zone include protecting "the character of established single dwelling housing areas by limiting the extent of change that can occur particularly with regard to the original pattern of subdivision and the density of dwellings".

The zone objectives also include maintaining residential areas mainly "low rise and predominantly single dwelling and low density in character".

ACT Labor amended its policy platform at its annual party conference in July to endorse overhauling the RZ1 zone to allow medium density housing in line with what is already permitted in RZ2.

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Transport Minister Chris Steel said the government could make changes to allow more housing with support of the policy at the party conference and said the current zoning system in the ACT was exclusionary.

"This has to change because we can no longer spread out into the nature reserves around Canberra to provide more housing estates," Mr Steel said, speaking in support of the motion on the conference floor.

The RZ2 zone allows low-rise housing with a mix of single dwelling and multi-unit development that contributes "to the support and efficient use of existing social and physical infrastructure and services in residential areas close to commercial centres".

New planning laws, which will significantly recast the way the ACT's planners consider proposed developments, passed the Legislative Assembly in June, following a detailed debate on more than 120 amendments.

Planning Minister Mick Gentleman at the time said the district strategies, territory plan and technical specifications would be released in about a month. However, three months later the documentation still has not been released.

"This bill today will put the main bones in place for us to do that territory plan and the district strategies, ensuring we can deliver better outcomes for the future: more housing for Canberrans in better circumstances," Mr Gentleman said in June.

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