Summary of our report

Why we did this work

Summary of our reportThe housing and urban development system is complex, and involves many public and private groups and organisations. Therefore, effective and enduring leadership is needed to co-ordinate work to address challenges in the system.

In October 2018, the Government established the Ministry of Housing and Urban Development to lead the housing and urban development system. We wanted to assess how well the Ministry has carried out its system leadership role, how effectively it is planning its stewardship of the housing and urban development system, and identify any additional actions that would help the Ministry to succeed.

What we found

The Ministry has made some significant achievements. It has:

  • worked with others to prepare a shared vision and outcomes, a clear strategy, and implementation plans for improving the performance of the housing and urban development system;
  • prepared a monitoring framework, and improved its strategic risk management and data and intelligence capability;
  • set up system-level governance arrangements, including the Chief Executives’ Housing Group;
  • put in place governance arrangements to oversee local partnerships and the implementation of its strategy; and
  • set up a dedicated business group to support governance arrangements, identify priorities, and ensure that work happening in the housing and urban development system is aligned.

What next?

The Ministry now needs to focus on leading the delivery of its strategies and improving the system’s performance.

One of the Ministry’s main challenges is to ensure that work by the groups and organisations involved in housing and urban development is aligned and that they work together to improve housing outcomes for New Zealanders.

We have made three recommendations to support this. Our recommendations involve the Ministry continuing to improve its understanding of the current and predicted performance of the system, strengthening system governance, and continuing to ensure that it has the right capability and capacity to lead the system.