2016-08-09 Planning & Environment Committee Agenda

PLANNING & ENVIRONMENT COMMITTEE MEETING AGENDA                               9 AUGUST 2016


                     infrastructure provisions for development but also requires Local
                     Governments to have a new LGIP completed under new statutory
                     guideline requirements.

                     The LGIP Statutory Guideline 03/14 has now reintroduced all the former
                     PIP with ICS requirements that were previously discarded in the 2011
                     amendments through a Schedule of Works Model (SOW) but without any
                     logical reason or purpose for doing so. For example, it has reintroduced
                     full costing of both existing and future infrastructure along with allocating
                     demands on a per catchment basis for each trunk network that will
                     provide a cost rate per demand unit per catchment per network etc
                     identical to what the former ICS did. However, the infrastructure charges
                     to be issued are no longer determined in this way but instead continue to
                     be governed by the State Planning Regulatory Provision (adopted
                     charges) with capped maximums.

                     Also reintroduced are 3rd party reviews of draft LGIPs by an appointed
                     reviewer that must now also be engaged and paid for by Local
                     Government prior to State reviews under a drawn out time consuming
                     statutory process under Statutory Guideline 04/14. This issue has
                     previously been raised under the previous motion no 28 at the 118 th
                     LGAQ Annual Conference in 2014 but unfortunately has not instigated
                     any corrective actions by the State Government to date.

                     There clearly is no longer any need for these overly burdensome
                     requirements for costing of existing infrastructure, demand catchment
                     allocation and multiple reviews by different parties other than directly by
                     the local government itself. Furthermore, it also serves no purpose for the
                     development industry having had all their previous issues addressed via
                     the legislative tools regarding the level of charges, infrastructure offset,
                     revaluing and conversion provisions.

                     Therefore, much of the work required to be undertaken to satisfy the
                     Statutory Guidelines is now a complete waste of valuable time and
                     resources and places a completely unnecessary administrative and cost
                     burden on Local Governments and their communities for no real purpose
                     or tangible benefit.

                     The historical miniscule results over the last 20 years of numerous
                     infrastructure planning and charging reform is sufficient evidence that the
                     past and current framework is completely unreasonable and unworkable.

                     The LGIP requirements and whole process needs to be greatly improved
                     to become fit for purpose, easily attainable and manageable by Local
                     Government under a system that is simple, straight forward, not overly
                     bureaucratic and easily updatable. For example, enabling LGIP details to
                     remain in “charges resolutions” or simply apply the interim LGIP
                     amendment process (i.e. limited to Local Government review and Public
                     consultation) for all LGIP requirements would easily achieve this as has
                     already been clearly and satisfactorily demonstrated. In contrast, the new
                     LGIP requirements under the new Statutory Guidelines have nil results
                     to show since its introduction over two years ago.




                     The new Planning Act 2016 is due to commence next year and a draft
                     Interim Minister’s Guidelines and Rules document has just been released
                     on the Departments website. At this time, a full review of this new

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