Development control plans under spotlight

The Minister for Planning and Infrastructure, Brad Hazzard has forwarded a bill reducing the level of control local councils have over developments in their local government areas.

The move was rubbished by Leichhardt Greens Councillor, Rochelle Porteous, who argued the move played into the hands of developers.

Mr Hazzard has labelled Development Control Plans (DCPs) as too powerful and complex for developers to comply with controls. He is concerned councils have become increasingly inflexible in carrying out DCP guidelines.

“There are few restrictions on the form or content of DCPs,” a Department of Planning and Infrastructure spokesperson said. “Some DCPs are up to 3,500 pages in length, creating confusion, unnecessary red tape and significantly adding to development assessment times.”

The Environmental Planning and Assessment Bill 2012 is set to return DCPs to their role as a guideline for developers and provide more flexibility for councils when assessing projects.

The spokesperson said councils can still consider DCPs when assessing development applications.

“It means councils will have more power to be flexible and consider innovative solutions when assessing development proposals, helping to create good planning outcomes,” the spokesperson said.

Ms Porteous said the bill was a way to clear obstacles for developers.

“It’s completely driven by developers’ agenda,” Ms Porteous said. “Basically the Coalition State Government has shown its true hand, and its true hand is that it is in the developers’ hand.

“This is what developers want and this is what the government is giving them.”

Ms Porteous said DCPs are developed through consultation with the community and are important for protecting community heritage.

“About 70 per cent of Leichhardt is heritage conservation zones and they each have specified streetscapes and expectations for retention of those streetscapes,” she said. “If we lose those controls from DCPs, we lose the things that are most valuable to all our residents and all our businesses that live in the area.”

Ms Porteous said when she raised the issues with Mr Hazzard, he replied he wanted to get the bill through as quickly as possible.

“He is not doing any consultation … He is not doing council consultation; he is not doing stakeholder consultation.”

Ms Porteuous forwarded an urgent motion about the change in a Leichhardt Council meeting on Tuesday.