New Planning Reform

NSW residents are being forced out of their local planning process, with the Joint Regional Planning Panels set to begin determining a wide range of development applications within a month.

The Panels will marginalise councils and communities even further in a process where local input is paramount, and where plan makers must be directly accountable to the community.

Planning Brad Hazzard claims to be building the best planning system in Australia and that claim is highly debatable.

The State Government seems keen to seize control of development decisions with very little consideration of council or community views, there is something quite Orwellian about this entire process. The Panels are an unnecessary duplication of bureaucracy and will not, as claimed, de-politicise the process.

The Panels are taking a role that is currently handled, generally very well, by NSW councils, they are introducing another layer of bureaucracy and NSW residents will have to foot the bill. The Minister assumes his appointed members will be less susceptible to outside pressures than councillors, but in reality the only difference is that they won't be accountable to the local community. In fact, it seems the only person they will be politically accountable to is the Minister."

The Minister has the power to remove all of a council's planning powers at any time without referring to Parliament. These Panels now have a framework for dictating strategic planning in our local communities.