Image: Sydney's CBD. Photo: Wikicommons.
BY RYAN QUINN
City of Sydney Council will retain its planning powers, despite rumoured threat from the proposed “undemocratic” Greater Sydney Commission.
Urban Taskforce CEO Chris Johnson said that draft legislation brought into NSW parliament this week gives the commission the power to make Local Environmental Plans, District Plans and to determine Sydney’s future.
“The Sydney Planning Panels will be determining development applications over $20 million and the commission will have the authority to make Local Environmental Plans (LEPs),” Mr Johnson said.
Local Environment Plans are currently a council responsibility.
City of Sydney’s Central Sydney Planning Committee will, however, retain its power to determine applications for major developments with an estimated cost of more than $50 million.
Other councils aren’t as lucky though, with the commission looking to split Sydney into six regional planning districts.
Greens MLC David Shoebridge said that the draft legislation gives enormous planning power to a commission which is “undemocratic” and “lacks accountability”.
Mr Shoebridge said that the commission will be handed appeals power, originally introduced to the Department of Planning in 2011, to allow for the approval of spot rezonings even if council has opposed it.
“If a developer came to a council and wanted a significant increase for the zoning of a site to increase what they build on it, traditionally council had a veto on it which was unappeasable,” he said.
“At least when the Minister approved a rezoning, which local residents might be offended by, they could hold that Minister accountable in the next election.”
The commission’s appointed nominees won’t be bound to consult with local councils or residents and won’t be required to be democratically-accountable.
Mr Johnson said it was important that the commission was separate from the Department of Planning and the Planning Minister.
He said that the commission “clearly” would have to work within the strategies for the city, under new District Plans.
“So there is always a top-down structure across the planning of the city because if the government is going to put a new metro system, they can’t let 40 different councils decide on where it should go.”
The commission’s inception comes in the wake of the IPART recommendations that the City was not fit for the future in its current capacity.
Mr Johnson said that regardless of how, or if, councils are merged, the strategic planners from each council should collaborate to provide a district-wide service. “A plan B option to forcing amalgamation would be to say well let’s at least get the planners into an alignment with what’s going to happen with the future plan of the city,” he said.
