Toowoomba Regional Council’s Nancy Sommerfield concerned over land, housing supply across region
A Toowoomba councillor has locked horns with one of the TRC’s top public servants over the issue of land supply across the region, saying her family had been personally affected by the situation.
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Cr Nancy Sommerfield’s comments came during a council motion to review its Local Government Infrastructure Plan (LGIP), which lays out the organisation’s investment into sewerage, water and other networks across the region.
Cr Sommerfield argued that the council should also review the priority infrastructure area (PIA) to grow it, citing issues raised by the development industry around land supply.
“If this is a two-year process (to review the LGIP), we’re looking at two years before we have a review of the PIA,” she said.
“My concern with all of this, as I expressed earlier, is there are people unable to get houses or rent houses.
“People renting houses are being asked to leave because the owners want to sell them.
“In Pittsworth, all the land that is capable of having a house built on it has been sold.
“I know personally that this is what is going on, I’m experiencing it with my family.
“The developers have been in and talked to us, and tried to explain it to us.”
The concerns were similar to comments made by members of the development industry, highlighted in a recent residential market report by analyst Michael Matusik.
TRC planning and development general manager pushed back against Cr Sommerfield’s points, saying housing supply was primarily an issue now due to the popularity of the federal HomeBuilder grant.
“The fact that land is not inside the PIA does not mean it cannot be developed – it can be developed,” he said.
“The PIA is an indication of the financial commitments that council is making to rolling out trunk infrastructure.
“We’ve had an example a couple of times, where developers are looking at developing land outside the PIA. It’s possible, but what it means is the developer has to pick up those bring-forward costs to bring that to market.
“The development industry has been marking time for about three years in terms of demand, and the Federal Government came out six months ago with an initiative that has stimulated the market incredibly and developers are scrambling to construct additional stages to their developments to bring to market allotments.
“It’s an issue of demand over the past three years, and really I don’t think by changing the boundary of the PIA we’re going to do much at this stage.”
The councillors voted to review the LGIP ahead of the new plan in 2022.
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Originally published as Toowoomba Regional Council’s Nancy Sommerfield concerned over land, housing supply across region