Page 1269 - Week 04 - Thursday, 7 April 2016
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This government has shown its commitment to support the ACT building and construction industry through the economic stimulus measures announced in 2014. Further, the government has made firm commitments to address housing affordability. Any reduction in costs achieved through streamlining processes has the potential to positively impact on the end cost of projects, improving housing affordability and supporting the building and construction industry.
The final subject in planning 101 is the environmental assessment of the impact of the proposed development. The Planning and Development Act already allows efficiency in this area by providing a process whereby a prior environmental planning study may be considered to meet the assessment requirements relative to the proposed development. This process includes community consultation and entity referrals; and, if the application is supported, has the potential to save the proponent significant costs while ensuring that environmental impacts have been addressed. If there is no prior study that could meet the environmental assessment impact requirements for the proposed development, the proponent needs to go through the full environmental assessment process.
The costs associated with these planning processes, directly through the dollar cost of preparing planning documents such as planning studies, the DA and draft environmental impact statement but also indirectly through the time required to identify legislative requirements and to work with the relative directorates, can add significantly to the overall expense of the proposed development. These costs ultimately are passed on to the end home owner, commercial tenant or investor.
This bill is an excellent example of this government’s commitment to reducing red tape and the delivery of administrative efficiencies by providing an option for a proponent to bring together these three independent planning processes—the draft territory plan variation process, the DA and the draft environmental impact statement process or application to use a prior environmental study—at the notification stage for one comprehensive notification process. Prior to notification the proponent carries out all the things that they do now.
Following notification, each planning process operates as it does now: the draft territory plan variation is progressed under the exact same legislated requirements; the DA is assessed in exactly the same way; and the environmental impacts of the development are assessed in exactly the same way as they currently are. However, and here is the key protection for the community in allowing these planning processes to be run concurrently, a concurrent DA cannot be approved by me as the Minister for Planning and Land Management or the Planning and Land Authority unless the other concurrent processes are complete.
I have broadly outlined the core features of the bill and I would now like to speak on key provisions that relate to amendments to territory plan provisions in the planning act. As I mentioned earlier, the territory plan is the cornerstone of planning in the ACT, containing the zones, uses, rules and criteria for all development in the ACT except on national land. The plan also lists those types of developments that are prohibited, and section 136 of the Planning and Development Act prohibits a person making an application if any part of the proposed development is prohibited.
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