Page 2431 - Week 08 - Thursday, 6 June 2013
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been undertaken. I think it is important to ensure that the territory plan reflects as much detail about an area as possible, so if decisions have already been made about an area, it is sensible to ensure that ACTPLA is able to reflect this.
Thirdly, one of the key changes is in relation to provisions in an approved estate development plan which would have been through a development application process, with consultation. This bill proposes enabling these provisions to be incorporated into the territory plan. Currently this can only occur in areas that were zoned as “future urban areas”, but under this amendment ongoing provisions which apply to other areas will also be able to be incorporated into the territory plan.
This is a sensible change, as many area-specific provisions are created through the estate development planning process, as this is the culmination of the work distilled from a broad structure plan to a concept plan and then to a more detailed estate development plan. There will have been a few rounds of industry and community feedback through these processes.
It is very important that these area-specific requirements are retained in an enforceable document, and in the one place. Keeping all the codes and rules that might apply to any particular area in the one place is one of the key intentions of the new planning system, so that developers know what rules will apply.
This provision in the legislation will be very important for infill developments as, hopefully, we will see more estate development plans being developed for areas which already have zoning applied, as opposed to greenfields developments which are on areas marked as future urban areas.
Any technical amendments that are made for this purpose will be subject to limited community consultation, which essentially means a notice in the newspaper. This is because when an estate development plan is being approved by ACTPLA, they sometimes include new provisions to cover an issue which was raised in the consultation process or which ACTPLA has self-identified, but those provisions will not have been through a public consultation process yet.
In talking about consultation, as well as the changes in relation to what sort of changes can be made through technical amendments, there are some amendments in this bill that pertain to the length of time that territory plan variations and estate development plan development applications should be open for consultation. I am pleased to see that in this bill consultation times are being extended for both full draft territory plan variations and technical amendments, as well as for estate development plans.
For full draft plan variations, the minimum required time will be increased to 30 working days—that is, six weeks—up from 15 working days, or three weeks. And for technical variations, the minimum consultation period will be increased from 15 to 20 working days. For estate development plans, if the proposal is for a future urban area, the consultation is being lengthened from two weeks to four weeks, or 20 working days; and for non-future urban areas, consultation will also be 20 working days, increased from 15 working days.
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