National promises to scrap parking minimums ban outside intensification areas
National has promised to scrap the blanket ban on minimum car parking requirements in city and district plans. The pledge is part of its plan for Auckland.
Under the proposal, councils could set minimum off-street parking rules outside areas identified for intensification, where more homes are planned close together. Minimums work like a floor. They set the lowest number of parks a new build must include. According to RNZ, that discretion would cover suburban neighbourhoods, greenfield subdivisions on undeveloped land at the edge of the city, and business and industrial parks. In effect, it would bring back council-set requirements in those places, as reported by Stuff.
The package is titled 'Building the Future: Backing Auckland to succeed'. It is attributed to Simon Watts and transport spokesperson Chris Bishop. National lists it as dated 14 Oct 2026.
Bishop said the blanket ban "has not worked". He said the economic theory behind it did not allow for "the reality of New Zealand's suburban streets". Many streets, especially in Auckland, are clogged and hard to get through, he said, with people parking on berms and footpaths. In some cases, he said, people had to walk "ten minutes or more" to get home.
Minimum requirements were removed to encourage intensification and reduce car dependency. The ban National would remove was introduced as a Labour-era planning reform, according to The Post.
The proposal sets a boundary on the map. Councils would be able to require off-street parking in suburban areas. Areas identified for intensification would be excluded from that restored discretion. Greenfields and business and industrial parks are named alongside suburban neighbourhoods.
The broader context here is how parking rules connect. District plan rules, the council rulebooks for land use, affect street parking and how sites are laid out. A blanket ban removes councils from that decision. Restoring the tool puts the decision back into city and district plan processes, suburb by suburb and zone by zone.
Looking at what this means for the campaign, the Auckland framing is deliberate. The argument is built around suburban experience rather than development economics. It presents restored council discretion as the answer to clogged streets and long walks from car to front door. For advisers and officials, the line between intensification areas and other suburbs will do most of the work. How councils draw boundaries on a map, and how they set any new minimums in greenfields and in business and industrial parks, will shape effects on layout, cost and street pressure.
