21 February 2011
The Urban Taskforce today called on both sides of politics to adopt a 10 point plan for fixing NSWs broken planning system, which is curtailing vital urban growth and renewal. The Taskforces chief executive, Aaron Gadiel, said that there was desperate need for an efficient, workable planning system that delivers the housing, retail development and new workplaces the community urgently requires.
When private developers are unable to develop new housing, its ordinary homebuyers and renters who suffer most, Mr Gadiel said.
Whats more, almost everyone shops and works in premises developed by the private sector and more are required. Mr Gadiel said that NSW property development has been in serious decline since 2002.
Until 2007, NSW was the nations number one state for building activity this shouldnt have been surprising given that its Australias most populous state, he said.
However, in 2007, Victoria stole NSWs title.
Victoria has never looked back in the last financial year, for every dollar spent by builders in NSW, $1.20 was spent in Victoria.
While NSW accounts for 33 per cent of the population, it makes up just 24 per cent of Australias building activity.
In the last financial year, work started on 52,000 new Victorian private sector homes, while in NSW work started on only 26,000 homes.
The housing undersupply is the main reason why residential rents have been galloping ahead of inflation.
Both sides of politics should make decisive policy commitments to address these issues.
Mr Gadiel said that NSW needed more than new housing and floorspace targets.
Its pointless for the state government to simply set targets, when so many local councils have almost no interest in seeing them achieved.
Mr Gadiel said that more basic reform was required.
At the very least, NSW must get housing supply back to the performance levels of the 1990s.
This means we need a minimum annual average supply of about 25,000 extra homes for Sydney and 39,000 extra homes for NSW.
“This would require a doubling of the current rate of housing construction.
It would bring us in-line with the per-capita rate of housing construction weve seen in other comparable states.
The Urban Taskforce is advocating a 10 point plan for the reform of NSWs planning system. The plan is built in the Urban Taskforces policy work in the Deny Everything and Going Nowhere reports. This plan would:
1. Re-design the NSW planning system so that it is about:
– supporting the states economy;
– promoting liveable communities;
– managing impacts on public infrastructure;
– promoting private investment by respecting property rights; and
– promoting ecologically sustainable development.
2. Keep joint regional planning panels and impose new rules to limit bureaucratic and political games. This can be done by ensuring that development meeting pre-determined standards is entitled to approval and require consent authorities to deal with matters promptly by deeming approval where no decision is made.
3. Reduce uncertainty by limiting the matters that can be considered in the development assessment process.
4. Progress the rezoning of land for development as promised in numerous strategies and give proponents Queensland-style appeal rights when rezoning proposals are unreasonably refused or delayed.
5. Ensure that a private property owner is properly compensated for the removal of their land use rights by the government (e.g. down-zoning, heritage listing, etc).
6. Reduce and reform state and local council development levies – so that there are less economic distortions and there is greater transparency – and increased public urban infrastructure investment in higher growth areas.
7. Emulate Victoria by introducing permanent stamp duty concessions for off-the-plan home purchases.
8. Reform the template being used in the preparation of new zoning plans – so it allows a wider range of development and reduces over-regulation.
9. Retain a special approvals stream for state and regionally significant projects at arms length from local politicians and council bureaucrats.
10. Prevent the loss of trade suffered by existing businesses from being considered when deciding on new commercial or retail development. Competition should be embraced, not prevented.
The Urban Taskforce is a property development industry group, representing Australias most prominent property developers and equity financiers.
