2017-04-11 Planning & Environment Committee Agenda

PLANNING & ENVIRONMENT COMMITTEE MEETING AGENDA   11 APRIL 2017




                                                  Page 31 of 106

PLANNING & ENVIRONMENT COMMITTEE MEETING AGENDA                                                                         11 APRIL 2017

   2016 - Resolution 027 - Planning Powers - Local Government Infrastructure Plans - Amend, Simplify a...                      Page 2 of 5
   otherwise required in a Priority Infrastructure Plan (PIP) up until the cut-off date for when a new current Local
   Government Infrastructure Plan (LGIP) must be in place.

   It should be specifically noted that the pre-2011 PIPs (introduced by legislative amendments in September 2004)
   required full costing of existing and future trunk infrastructure along with demand catchment apportionment
   specifically for the purpose of developing Infrastructure Charges Schedules (ICS) in determining the level of
   infrastructure charges that development were to contribute towards each trunk network. These PIPs required 3rd
   party review by the Queensland Competition Authority (QCA) undertaken and paid for by the State Government
   as part of their review. Due to the complicated, time consuming, resource and cost hungry processes involved to
   prepare these PIPs with ICS'’s, only a handful of Local Government PIPs ever made it to the QCA review stage
   that occurred during 2008-2009. Following these QCA reviews, this process then ceased with commencement of
   further legislative reviews and changes for infrastructure planning and charges.

   On commencement of the 2011 adopted charges legislative amendments, PIPs no longer contained ICSs as
   these are now obsolete under the new adopted charges regime with only costing of future trunk infrastructure
   remaining relevant. Subsequently, many Local Governments were able to instigate the required infrastructure
   planning documents quickly, initially through adopted charges resolutions prior to completing and adopting PIPs.

   The July 2014 SPA legislative amendments continue the adopted charges regime along with additional offset,
   revaluing and conversion 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
   118th 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 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 guideline
   has not been completed but preliminary perusal highlights the same unnecessary and irrelevant requirements
   continuing and a potential for further complications.

   http://www. |gaq.asn.au/group/guest/motions-database/-/asset_publisher/3BOgroUS3ipA/content/2016-r..._                      17/03/2017

                                                                                                                        Page 31 of 106