Development Assessment

All councils in NSW (and possibly Australia) should have the same notification procedures. If they differ between councils they can differ on two sides of a road, which causes unecessary conflict and anxiety.

I would note that e-planning can be a concern in rural areas due to many systems requiring good bandwidth access that is simply not available. If the e-planning system involves a lot of waiting around take up will be low.

From my perspective I would not say that I fully support the standard template model that is currently being promoted. Supporting this would seen to be contradictory to the points further down where LGMA does not support the State Government being able to make changes without consultation. Allowing for a mandatory LEP also allows for State imposed conditions without consultation.

I strongly support the need for one integrated plan for each area. For the State Government to direct the planning framework they should not have SEPPs, as they could simply insert those requirements into each council's LEP. Otherwise you still have multiple documents planners and developers need to consult.

While it would be good to have all the plans available electronically from a State Government site, provision needs to be made to have these available in an easily followed paper format as well.

It should be considered that in setting "deemed to comply" periods it would create a situation where it is in the best interest of a developer with a bad development to lodge complex and difficult to comprehend development to try and overload the system, thus getting approval by default. It would also be prudent for a developer to lodge all of his planned developments at one time to try and get exceeded time frames to occur (probably more of an issue in smaller areas without the capacity to absorb a big jump in applications.

If we are recommending that the siX viewer I would also consider that it would have to be based on the Department of Lands base data. I this case we should also recommend that the information be made accurate as errors currently exist in the property information on this web site. I would also note that I did not find this a user friendly as, for example, Google Maps and this may be an issue for many one time or infrequent users. The satellite resolution will also make it difficult, but not impossible, for users in this area so we may want to suggest better resolution photography as people who are not used to the top down view may find it difficult to accurately identify their property.

At the information session we were advised that planners would only be accredited while they were at their particular Council. I asked if private certifiers were certified only to their current company and adviser that they were not. There should be no logical reason why a council planner moving from one council to another should not be able to retain their certification. I also have concerns that the certification process for councils will be based on large city situations and consequently create a sizeable cost impact on smaller councils, which will not be comparable to their development volume and types.

Word spellchecker identified the following problems:

There is a typo at the start of the fourth paragraph on page four. Another in the first line of the table under "Development Assessment and Review" on page 5. On page 6 the words "oversimplification" need correction. Several mistakes in the last line of the table on page 9. Spelling in last row of table on page 12 and again on page 17.