North Sydney Council latest to reject the government's planning process: Chris Johnson

Councils are taking over the NSW Planning system with the latest being North Sydney Council’s request to be excluded from planning proposal policy.

At its meeting on 30 July North Sydney Council voted to put all planning proposals on hold until 1 July 2020 as this would be consistent with what the government allowed Ryde Council to do.

The impact of this resolution, if accepted by the NSW Government, will be to put a hold on all major projects in North Sydney for the next 2 years.

Ryde Council seems to be now driving the planning system in Sydney as it is able to bypass Department of Planning policies with the support of the NSW Government.

Now the rest of Sydney’s councils are following the Ryde approach so they can also be exempt from NSW Government policy.

Northern Beaches Council recently requested the Minister for Planning to exempt them from planning policies related to affordable rental housing, seniors housing and disabled housing.

Now North Sydney Council wants to be exempt from having to consider planning proposals from the private sector for a two year period.

The NSW Government must exert its authority as the responsible agency for the Environmental Planning and Assessment Act and not allow a feeding frenzy driven by small councils that are keen to undermine the state government’s authority.

We have seen the NSW Government allow 50 councils across NSW to be allowed to delay the introduction of the ‘Missing Middle’ code for terrace houses for a year and then the NSW Government delegated planning along the Sydenham to Bankstown corridor back to the local councils who had been fighting the extent of development.

Private sector developers are finding that there is major confusion about who is running the planning system and that is leading to a Sovereign Risk issue that is undermining investments that assumed state government policies gave some certainty to outcomes.

It is looking like NSW is going into a lock down mode for two years to appease a noisy minority who are concerned about change.

The losers will be the young couples and families looking for somewhere to live.

Chris Johnson is the Urban Taskforce CEO