The outrage from Christchurch residents over the $7 million Victoria Square revamp has sparked public consultation.

The CCDU had refused to put its plans to remodel the square to public consultation last year.

In a sudden change, people can now have their say on the controversial work in March.

Christchurch Central MP Nick Wagner says they hadn't realised how attached people were to the square.

"There's a matter of understanding what they were thinking of doing and what it looked like.

"I don't think we've communicated it very well, simply because we didn't realise it was quite so sensitive. There's not a huge amount of change actually in the proposals."