2016-12-12 General Committee Agenda

GENERAL COMMITTEE MEETING AGENDA                                             12 DECEMBER 2016


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;
H.   Noosa Council does not support proposed changes relating to Community Infrastructure
     designation that will remove local government powers to designate infrastructure. Nor do
     we support the proposal for the State Planning Minister to be the sole designating Minister
     for Infrastructure Designation in Queensland and to thus choose what developments can
     proceed, be they public or private infrastructure, and have them exempt from planning
     scheme requirements and from infrastructure charges; and
I.   The maximum infrastructure charges prescribed by legislation remain unchanged since
     being introduced in 2011. Infrastructure charges have dropped in real terms due to
     indexation not being applied. This prohibits councils from making charges that reflect the
     actual current costs of building infrastructure. Thus the proportional costs of public
     infrastructure related to new development are being met by the community. Meanwhile the
     State Government adds 3.5% annual indexation to its own fees and charges. Noosa
     Council thus requests that annual automatic indexation of the current maximum capped
     charges be introduced to reflect increasing costs of providing infrastructure.

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