2016-08-15 General Committee Agenda

GENERAL COMMITTEE MEETING AGENDA                                                 15 AUGUST 2016


              On commencement of the 2011 adopted charges legislative amendments, PIPs no
              longer contained Infrastructure Charges Schedules (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 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 guideline has not been completed but preliminary
              perusal highlights the same unnecessary and irrelevant requirements continuing and a
              potential for further complications.



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