2015-06-29 General Committee Meeting Agenda

GENERAL COMMITTEE MEETING AGENDA                                                    29 JUNE 2015


Ordinary Meeting 15 January, 2015, Item 1, Page 3

That Council note the report by the Principal Strategic Planner and the Manager, Planning &
Environment to the General Committee dated 12 January 2015 and request the Chief Executive
Officer to make a submission to the Dept of State Development, Infrastructure and Planning
regarding the following points:
A.   The Planning & Development Bill and Planning & Development Regulations are not clear in
     the decision rules, particularly for those applications which conflict with the planning
     scheme. It is considered that where an application conflicts with the planning scheme, the
     onus of proof should be on the applicant to prove the merits of the proposal and justify any
     inconsistencies;
B.   The Planning & Development Bill includes a clause that allows a regulation to prescribe the
     assessment manager for a development application as any person from a class of persons
     who have stated qualifications or characteristics. It is unclear whether this will result in an
     additional class of private entities (chosen by the Minister) being identified as assessment
     managers in place of councils for particular applications. This is of significant concern as
     experience has demonstrated that private building certification has not always been
     successful in implementing planning scheme requirements. This is particularly important for
     any operational works applications that include works which are to become a public asset
     and be maintained at ratepayers expense;
C.   The Planning & Environment Court Bill maintains the specific criteria for making a costs
     order introduced with the Sustainable Planning and other Legislation Amendment Bill 2012.
     These rules do not serve the public interest of enabling the community, submitters, local
     governments and developers to dispute planning decisions due to the risk and uncertainty
     of the Court awarding costs against them. The previous Court powers to award costs in
     circumstances where cases were frivolous or vexatious or instituted primarily to delay or
     obstruct are considered sufficient protections from abuse of the system;
D.   The definition of material change of use should not be limited to only increases in scale and
     density of the premises, as there are circumstances where reducing the scale of the
     development does materially change the site’s use. This is particularly relevant for
     developments which include an important community use or the like. For example
     removing the nursing home component from a retirement village may have a significant
     social impact on an area;
E.   The Planning & Development Bill maintains and extends the time frame for applicants to be
     able revive a development application where it lapses. This ability is not consistent with the
     principles for the DA Rules of being an applicant driven process, and is likely to create
     administrative problems for Councils and lead to significant confusion for the community,
     particularly submitters.
F.   As Noosa Council values community engagement in its planning and development
     decisions, we have concerns regarding changes that may serve to inhibit, obstruct or
     minimise resident input. Reductions in public notification periods and removal of existing
     requirements for notices to be placed in local newspapers are thus not supported and there
     should be a minimum notification period for applications of 20 business days. We also have
     concerns about the proposal that an applicant may choose to publicly notify a development
     application as early as 5 days after the development application is properly made. We
     believe submitters are better served under the current arrangement where public
     notification is able to occur following the information request period;
G.   Noosa Council has long enjoyed a locally popular planning scheme that is in part premised
     on studies and deliberations concerning the ideal carrying capacity for our shire. We have
     concerns that the Queensland Planning Reform Process may herald arbitrary
     enlargements of the Urban Footprints within the Noosa Shire area;




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