26 August 2013
The release of figures by the NSW Department of Planning and Infrastructure indicate an improvement in Sydney’s housing construction of 5,500 dwellings over the previous year which is good news, says the Urban Taskforce.
Only 15,591 dwellings were built in 2011-12 while 21,097 were built in 2012-13 which is a big jump in production, says the Urban Taskforce CEO, Chris Johnson. On top of this, approvals have jumped from 24,000 a year to over 28,000 in 2012-13. The NSW Government has initiated a number of economic stimulus programs to help lift housing numbers and these are clearly paying off.
It is important that the State Government continues to take a leadership role in driving housing supply through the proposed new planning system. Our concern is that the government has stated that it will be giving planning powers back to communities and this could make infill housing for apartments more difficult to achieve. At least 11,000 of the 28,000 approvals last financial year were from Part 3A approvals by the State Government and this process will no longer be supported by the government.
While the completion of 21,000 houses in a year for Sydney is an improvement, the Urban Taskforce believes that over 30,000 new dwellings a year will be required to support Sydney’s growth. The draft Metropolitan Strategy calls for 27,250 new dwellings a year but we believe this underestimates the city’s growth based on recent projections.
While the Metropolitan Development Program report on dwelling numbers is very useful data it would be of more value to the industry if the data was broken down to indicate the numbers of detached houses and multi-unit dwellings particularly apartments.
The new planning system will need to support even more housing approvals particularly in the more sensitive urban infill sites where a growing number of apartments are best located. The Urban Taskforce encourages the government to define more Urban Activation Precincts to demonstrate state support for growth in key areas around transport nodes.
