Councils to lose approval rights over developments
Matthew Moore
June 28, 2012
RADICAL changes proposed for the state's planning system to be revealed within weeks are set to include measures to curb the role of local government councillors in refusing or approving developments.
The Minister for Planning, Brad Hazzard, has revealed his concerns that local government councillors often determine developments according to what suits their personal political interests rather than on the merits of the proposal.
For the second day in a row, Mr Hazzard addressed a developer lobby group to discuss the green paper to be released next month which will outline a new planning system for the state likely to become law early in the new year.
Mr Hazzard told an Urban Taskforce lunch he believes local government councillors should be involved in setting planning frameworks for their area but should have no role in assessing individual developments.
''I am very supportive of keeping the politicians, as far as is humanly possible, out of development assessment decisions,'' he said.
About a dozen of 152 NSW councils have appointed independent panels to determine major applications and Mr Hazzard strongly supported that approach.
''The 139 that have not done it, think about it, because your elected officials should be dealing with the broad strategic issues … not dealing with individual development applications,'' he said.
With council elections in September, Mr Hazzard said there would be the usual rush of councils heading to the Land and Environment Court to fight applications because it suited their political interests. He flagged the green paper would include measures to keep councillors from making decisions based on what was in their personal political interests.
''It is time to get a fairer system, a more proactive system, and one that does not waste ratepayers' money,'' he said.
''They have to understand it is their job to produce proper merit-based decisions in the current system and one of those ways is for professional people to support that exercise.''
Developers defended Mr Hazzard's plans, outlined in the Herald yesterday, for a system providing them with more certainty for their projects. The system would see communities consulted extensively to reach agreement on a planning regime for a specific area so that once it was reached developers could build without each project turning into what Mr Hazzard called ''site-specific planning wars''.
The chief executive of lobby group the Urban Development Institute, Stephen Albin, said the community had lost faith in the existing system and the government's plans could change that.
"It means communities will not only have greater certainty as to what can take place, and will also give communities greater ownership of the end result,'' he said.
But the opposition planning spokeswoman, Linda Burney, predicted the changes would remove power from communities to block developments.
Although the former Labor premier Kristina Keneally praised the NSW planning system was the best in the country, Ms Burney said she agreed a new law was needed to replace one so cumbersome and unwieldy.
Read more:
http://www.smh.com.au/nsw/councils-...evelopments-20120627-212w8.html#ixzz1z88VsFnW
