Mr. David Kennedy:

There was a question on how the private sector and, in particular, some smaller and mid-sized builders can be more productive and use up the capacity. It was stated earlier that many of the operators in the sector are probably operating at about 50% of capacity. If we can deal with the zoning issue, a secondary point comes to the fore. In the main, a lot of the expertise among smaller developers is in the area of houses more so than in more complex apartment development. On the density guidelines, reference was made to the fact that density is not set by developers but, rather, by local councils in development plans, etc. There is a concept that we often refer to as less being more. For example, in the event of a development being earmarked for, say, 50 units to the hectare rather than 70, the likelihood is that more units will be delivered because there will be more houses.

Small and medium-size developers, in particular, will be in a position to increase their capacity on foot of that, as against a scenario across the country whereby a high proportion of units are required to be apartments, which suffer from viability challenges.