2014-09-16 Planning & Organisation Committee Agenda

PLANNING & ORGANISATION COMMITTEE MEETING AGENDA                             16 September 2014


Assessment Rules
As with standard assessment a Planning Scheme may state the benchmarks against which
applications requiring merit assessment are to be assessed. Accordingly, merit assessment
may be undertaken against particular benchmarks of the Planning Scheme, or more broadly.
Additionally assessment must be carried out against prescribed mandatory matters and
other relevant matters that are not prescribed. However ‘relevant matters’ cannot include a
person’s personal circumstances, financial or otherwise. This is in line with SPA rules and
with judicial decisions that make private economics irrelevant to planning decisions.
Decision Rules
A decision in respect of an application requiring merit assessment must be based upon the
assessments described above and may be refused, approved in whole or in part, or
approved with conditions. The Bill does not propose to carry forward the existing statutory
rules that preclude approval of a development application where it would conflict with a
relevant State or Local Planning Instrument, in the absence of ‘sufficient grounds’. An open
merit based assessment against the relevant assessment benchmarks and prescribed or
relevant matters, is proposed.
The current statutory test requires refusal in the absence of a sufficient ground, which must
be a matter of public interest. The onus of proof is on the applicant. The most common
ground supporting approval is economic and planning ‘need’ for a proposal. The Bill
proposes that development will simply be assessed against the true policy intent of the
Planning Scheme. All things being equal, development that offends the policy intent would
be refused. However consideration of other relevant matters may tip the balance in favour of
approval. Thus there will be greater scope under the P&D Bill to gain an approval.
New currency period rules for development approvals will apply, reverting back to provisions
similar to that which existed under the IPA, allowing councils to stipulate a currency period.
Where this is not stated in an approval, Material Change of Use will be 6 years,
Reconfiguring a Lot 4 years and Operational Works 2 years. However, the Bill proposes that
the assessment manager must give the applicant and owner a notice advising them that the
approval is due to lapse. Where a notice is not given within the required period, the approval
does not lapse until 3 months after a notice is given. This obviously adds an administrative
responsibility for local government.
Chapter 4 – Infrastructure
The P&D Bill has generally brought across the Infrastructure Charging and Local
Government Infrastructure Plan amendments to SPA that commenced on 4 July 2014.
Officers made a submission to these amendments prior to them having effect and some
amendments were made, however, a number of critical areas were not addressed. In
particular, the concept of being able to convert from non-trunk infrastructure to trunk
infrastructure was introduced through a ‘conversion application’. While the principle is
reasonable, concern is raised about the ability to make this application at any time up until
works commence on site. Similarly, concern was raised on the ability to apply for a review of
offsets for trunk infrastructure establishment costs at any time up until the infrastructure
charge becomes due for payment. Further, there is no agreement to automatically index
infrastructure charges each year above the maximum State Planning Regulatory Provision in
line with the specified index, leaving it to the Minister’s discretion. Consequently,
infrastructure charge rates have remained the same since July 2011. There is also a
limitation on the ability to issue infrastructure charges on changes on older approvals (prior
to July 2011) and extensions to the currency period to addressing additional infrastructure
networks that apply today.




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