Waverley Mayor leads call for planning reforms to boost housing

Waverley Mayor Cr Will Nemesh is calling on the State Government to ease restrictions on planning approvals to enable more urgently needed housing and infrastructure to be built.

“Our current planning system has become bloated with bureaucratic complexities and over regulation, which has stifled housing supply and infrastructure delivery,” Mayor Nemesh said.

“I’m calling for a simpler process, more transparency and better alignment with local planning priorities.”

His successful Mayoral Minute in this month's Council meeting urges the State Government to reform development legislation to enable more housing and infrastructure delivery, including reducing required DA documentation and delegating low-impact DAs to Council rather than planning panels. Other items to be pushed included the option of digital DA notification and standardised conditions of development consent.

Given the urgent need for more housing and better infrastructure, Mayor Nemesh said immediate and wide-ranging reforms to the state’s planning system are long overdue.

Currently, if councils do not decide on a development within a certain time frame, it is automatically considered refused, termed ‘deemed refusal’. Mayor Nemesh is proposing compliant development not assessed within a given time frame be automatically approved, termed ‘deemed approval’.

The proposed reforms also seek greater accountability and transparency, such as performance measures for planning panels and publishing Complying Development Certificates (CDCs) in the same way that DAs are.

An additional recommendation is for Housing Productivity Contributions (HPCs), which developers pay to help increase affordable housing, to be spent locally and not regionally.

“We need contemporary planning legislation for community housing needs – now and in the future,” Mayor Nemesh said.