02 July 2013
The ICAC submission to the NSW White Paper on planning reform raises the need for a far greater skill set than currently exist in councils to assess complex applications and this can be provided through Regional Centres of Excellence for Planning shared by groups of councils, says the Urban Taskforce.
Planning is inevitably about balancing competing issues and while a ˜tick the box approach can work for some projects many performance based proposals will need to be assessed and this should be done by non-political planning experts, says Urban Taskforce CEO, Chris Johnson. ICAC raises concerns about the level of skills typically found in a council and the obvious solution is to increase the pool of skills by combining planners from 6 or 7 councils into a shared centre of excellence.
A larger planning office will have a range of skills and greater career prospects for individual planners and removes the planners from being associated with elected representatives from the individual councils.
The ICAC report seems to prefer a tick the box system where there is no flexibility about a projects compliance with the rules. Theoretically assessment could be made by a computer avoiding any potential for corruption by humans but our built environment may end up looking like a series of standard boxes. The interaction between the proponent, the regulator and stakeholders often leads to a ˜win win solution to the benefit of all. The Urban Taskforce believes this interaction is best managed through professional planning offices that are independent from councillors and through the use of independent assessment panels.
