Minns government cuts red tape to shave months off preschool planning approvals

Deputy Premier Prue Car is promising to fast-track almost 50 new public preschools in Sydney’s west by slashing red tape to get facilities built eight months faster.

• Car: We are following through on Box Hill promise

Exclusive: Deputy Premier Prue Car is promising to fast-track almost 50 new public preschools in Sydney’s west by slashing red tape to get facilities built eight months faster.

The Daily Telegraph can reveal that the Minns government will change planning rules to allow preschools to be built alongside existing public schools without the need for time-wasting development applications.

It comes after the Telegraph revealed families in the northwest were facing 90 minute commutes to send their kids to school thanks to failures of successive governments to deliver promised infrastructure.

A new facility in The Gables in Box Hill, is one of the 100 new public preschools the Minns government has vowed to build before 2027.

The public preschools, offering free early education to four and five year olds, will cater for more than 2000 kids in total by the time they are built.

Changes to state planning rules will ensure the preschools can be built over the next three years without the Education Department needing to deal with inevitable development application delays.

Stockland masterplanned community The Gables in Box Hill.

The new preschools will be built alongside existing and new public schools in places including Birrong, Blacktown North, Cabramatta West, Edensor Park, Hebersham, Mount Pritchard, Prairievale, and Yagoona.

Premier Chris Minns promised before the election that he would build 100 new preschools in his first term of office. The locations were selected by an independent panel which considered factors including predicted demand, educational need, and socio-economic data.

Ms Car will announce the planning changes to fast-track new preschools at the Telegraph’s Future Western Sydney event in Rosehill on Thursday.

Writing in today’s Telegraph, Ms Car slammed the former government for failing to deliver the infrastructure needed to keep up with booming population growth in the west.

Box Hill, Ms Car said, is just one of the suburbs “simply forgotten” by the Coalition.

“The young families in Box Hill and Gables deserve better.”

“Under the Minns Labor Government, planning approvals are underway for a long overdue public school for this community,” she said.

She admitted that in 2024, the community “should have more”.

Ms Car conceded that there are “still many pockets of disadvantage” in western Sydney, and promised to do better.

Fairfield West Public School is one of the schools which will have a public preschool open nearby.

“We know that preschool can change the trajectory of young lives, with benefits of early learning extending well into adulthood.

“It is a cruel irony that while children from disadvantaged backgrounds are most likely to benefit from high quality early education, they are among the least able to access it,” she said.

Mr Minns yesterday said it was unacceptable that families in Sydney’s west are being forced to live in infrastructure deserts without access to facilities like schools, parks and shopping centres.

“We want to build communities, we want to provide housing, and we want to make sure that there’s infrastructure when the homes are built,” he said.

“There’s too many examples in Sydney where we’ve got one – housing – but not the other – the infrastructure that growing communities need,” Mr Minns said.

“We know that we have to do more.”

The Minns government has also committed $60m to build and upgrade 50 preschools at non- government schools in areas of greatest need and has provided $17m to support capital works for early childhood services.

Planning Minister Paul Scully said his reforms to the state planning system will “make it quicker and easier to deliver public preschools in local schools.”

“We are removing red tape in the planning system so that more children have the best possible start in their education journey,” he said.

Meanwhile, the Telegraph can also reveal that Mr Scully is considering making it easier for permanent and temporary schools to be built alongside existing TAFE and university sites.

Draft planning changes published last month propose to allow new schools to be built alongside existing tertiary education facilities without needing consent.

The proposed reforms would also make it easier for schools to be moved due to disasters, and cut red tape for building “kiss and ride” zones.

Deep Singh, with his daughter Maahi Singh in Parramatta. Picture: Jonathan Ng

Deep Singh from Parramatta is happy to hear about the fast track initiative after he and his wife struggled to find a pre school for their four year old daughter Maahi.

“It’s really good news, we had a lot of trouble getting our daughter into pre school, we couldn’t find any place that would take her so we had to put her into daycare which is more expensive,” he said.

“It’s a great initiative as I also have a one month old son, hopefully by the time he needs pre school this project will be completed and there will be more options for us,” he said.

“It’s so hard to find a pre school, we were told we should of applied a year ago or that there was a huge wait list, in Parramatta there’s such a high density so fifty new schools just in western Sydney will help a lot.”

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