Development application time frames: How fast is The Hills Council?
THE Hills Council has streamlined its approvals process for mum-and-dad developers. See how they, Hornsby and Ku-ring-gai rate compared to other councils across Sydney in our special report.
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THE “mum and dad” developers of The Hills shire are taking advantage of the sixth-fastest development application approval times in Greater Sydney as the NSW Government rolls out its new compulsory independent hearing and assessment panels (IHAPs).
The Hills Shire Times can reveal the council approved 2037 development applications (DAs) in 2016-17 in a median determination time of 62 days.
Wollondilly Council is first, averaging 29 days and Cumberland — formed from the merger of parts of Auburn, Parramatta (Woodville ward) and Holroyd councils — is last at 125 days.
This at a time when the NSW Planning Department says The Hills will be the seventh-largest supplier of Sydney housing stock to 2021-22 with 10,650 new dwellings. Parramatta would be the biggest supplier, delivering 22,250 dwellings in the time frame.
The Hills Council’s general manager, Michael Edgar, said hiring competent staff, continual improvements to systems “to eliminate waste” and, where possible, working with applicants were key to achieving these approval results.
“There would be no reasons for a dwelling on urban zoned land to take more than a week to be approved, but it would take a total clean-up of legislation and competing controls to do that,” Mr Edgar said.
He made reference to the “competing priorities of different government agencies”, citing a “tension between environmental protection and bush protection”.
“The way you protect bush land is to clear vegetation but the way you protect the environment is not to clear vegetation,” he said.
Our performance would be even better if planning reform actually created efficiencies — Michael Edgar
Despite its current performance The Hills Council — along with all other councils in Greater Sydney and Wollongong — will lose the power to make decisions on any DAs valued over $5 million from March 1, after NSW Planning and Housing Minister, Anthony Roberts, introduced legislation “to end the dodgy and dirty backroom deals that have gone on for far too long inside local councils”.
IHAPs, consisting of three experts approved by the minister for planning and one council-appointed community member, will decide on all DAs above $5 million. And councillors will make no DA decisions, even though statewide they made only about two per cent until now.
The Hills’ first popularly elected mayor, Dr Michelle Byrne, said the introduction of IHAPs would impose pressures on existing services and cause delays in the approval process.
The Property Council of Australia’s NSW executive director, Jane Fitzgerald, said: “Time is cost, cost that gets added to the ledger and someone has to pay at the end of the day.” Either developers walk away from projects considered “too costly or too hard”, or they pass on the costs to the new home buyers, she said.
Mayor Byrne said ratepayers would foot the annual bill of operating an IHAP, estimated by the government as around $100,000. She called on the planning minister to scrap them now before they become a misuse of ratepayers’ funds.
The department of planning’s spokesman said: “Councils may find these costs are offset through savings on legal costs from reviews and appeals.”
The peak body for NSW local government, representing all the 152 councils including The Hills, agreed removing DA decision-making for DAs from councils would likely increase the cost to ratepayers.
I’m sure ratepayers will be upset to hear that their money has been spent on these panels when it could be better used within the community to rollout more parks, sporting fields, roads and more essential infrastructure — Mayor Michelle Byrne
“Councils will now have to administer the local planning panel of four additional people, in addition to elected councils,” Local Government NSW president Linda Scott said.
Dr Byrne said: “We believe IHAPs could cost our ratepayers approximately $132,000 per year and that’s without considering travel expenses for members or indeed staff time or administrative costs such as the preparation of business papers.
“That’s a significant sum of money which has not been part of council’s budget preparation and can only be funded by redistributing from core local government services, like our maintenance or community services.
“I’m sure ratepayers will be upset to hear that their money has been spent on these panels when it could be better used within the community to rollout more parks, sporting fields, roads and more essential infrastructure.”
Gary White, the state’s chief planner, reasoned there is no reason for local councillors to get “cornered and lampooned” over individual developments. Mr White, who helped lift southeast Queensland city Ipswich out of the doldrums before becoming the NSW Chief Planner in late 2015, said: “One of the things about IHAPs is to say to planning authorities, ‘look, concentrate on telling that story of what you want to see happen in your backyard; tell the strategic story and allow the technical side of the assessment to be assessed by experts and individuals’.”
“The one really important learning I got from doing the strategic plan for southeast Queensland was the importance of putting the infrastructure planning framework beside and parallel to the land-use framework,” Mr White, a Life Fellow of the Planning Institute of Australia, said.
Ms Fitzgerald, who is a former chief executive officer of the Royal Commission into Trade Union Governance and Corruption, agrees with the government that the IHAPs will free local councils to focus its efforts on strategic leadership.
“The former planning minister Rob Stokes would say often, and I think he’s right, that what most people want, like the average punter, wants to know is: what the rules are in relation to planning, whose applying the rules, and that the decisions are going to be taken in accordance with those rules in a reasonably transparent and fair way,” she said.
“So if their elected councillors set the rules, the experts (IHAP members) make the decisions, and there’s no brown paper bags full of money that cause problems in that process, and the process is fair and transparent, that’s a great conceptual framework. Now, having said all of that, resourcing is quite a separate issue.”
But an expert town planner, who attended a briefing by the NSW Planning Department last week (February 21) on the change, said there would be “teething problems” with the new IHAPs.
“There’s no perfect system, but it’s clear there are already problems with it based on what we were told at the briefing to a couple of hundred planners, lawyers and the odd politician,” John McFadden, who is one of 218 experts in a pool to sit on the new IHAPs, said.
“Community representatives are being brought in from outside some LGAs because of the lack of applicants.
“The IHAPs are a different system, but it’s important to remember most DAs (everything valued at less than $5 million) will still be determined by councils. And it’s important they continue to simplify their systems for the mums and dads who just want a new patio.”
Mayor Byrne said council’s role to represent the community effectively would be diminished because of these panels.
“IHAPs are useful if they are used voluntarily or when a council is underperforming and the Minister for Planning needs to put in a structure or a process to restore confidence in the decision-making process on planning matters,” she said, adding the council has “an impeccable record and works within legal parameters” and so “to be tarred with the same brush, when only a handful of councils have acted inappropriately, is not fair”.
Mr Edgar said he awaits authorisation from his council to commence appointment of any IHAP members after the councillors voted 13-0 against having an imposed IHAP. A job ad for a community member on The Hills panel had since been placed on the department of planning’s website. Applications close on March 26.
Three of the 180 complaints about the handling of a DA made to the Office of Local Government in 2016-17 were about The Hills Council, Department of Planning and Environment figures showed. Six and two were recorded against Hornsby and Ku-ring-gai Councils, respectively. One was recorded against neighbouring Blacktown Council.
The NSW Ombudsman’s 2016/17 annual report says council customer service continues to be the most-complained about issue across NSW (23.2 per cent), followed by development (14.2 per cent, or 440 complaints) including decisions on DAs.
GOVERNMENT PUSH FOR ‘FASTER, MORE EFFICIENT ASSESSMENTS’
WITH the Hills shire population forecast to grow to 250,971 by 2036, The Hills Council looks to deliver an average of 1,509 dwellings a year.
NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian has set a target of 90 per cent of housing approvals to be determined within 40 days by 2019.
Hornsby Council’s spokesman said it was “extremely important to note that the government target excludes large applications — the ones that blow our average out to 65 days)”.
“The government’s focus for the 40-day target is routine housing applications,” he said.
“Our current processing times for these are 44 days and council is highly confident of meeting the 40-day target by 2019.”
Planning shadow minister Michael Daley worried “this government is obsessed with pleasing big developers, with swathes of high-rise now dotting the horizon, while everyone and everything else comes second. No wonder communities feel ignored”.
“They’re getting thousands of new dwellings without the schools, hospitals and open-spaces to accommodate the new residents,” Mr Daley said.
“An empty government promise that things will get better is cold-comfort to the commuters sitting in bumper-to-bumper traffic as more and more towers go up.”
Chris Johnson of the Urban Taskforce, Australia’s peak property industry group, said apartment living was “actually the best way to accommodate growth. And a lot of people, especially the younger generation, are keen about a cosmopolitan, buzzy style of inner-city living”.
At the moment, councils have 42 days to approve DAs and if they do not a DA is automatically refused. This is called “deemed refusal provision”.
But what the Sydney and Western Sydney Business Chambers are saying is that it should be “deemed approved” if the council has not made a decision within the 42-day time frame.
The Western Sydney director of the Sydney Business Chamber, David Borger, wants council staff to turn to France for decision making inspiration and employ a charrette process, “where you get a group of people together that are forced to make a decision in a short space of time”.
“That’s what should happen for most of the DAs in councils,” Mr Borger, a former urban planner and one-time housing minister, said. The youngest person to hold the office of Lord Mayor of Parramatta where he served for three terms, he elaborated: “The team meets. They can spend a few hours on it if they want to. If they need information they can ask for it. But they’re forced to make a decision and that would radically reduce the DA processing time.”
“This particular innovation that has been suggested, around the charrette decision making, doesn’t necessarily require additional resources because all of those individual people — there could be six, seven or eight people in a team — they’ve all got to individually read the DA and provide their own separate advice anyway.
“The difference is that they will all be doing it on the one day, rather than at different times.”
Mr Edgar said: “It’s back to the future but the government would have to assist us to reconcile some of the competing legislation. You can’t give a neighbour an opportunity to make a submission in a day.”
Local Government NSW’s Ms Scott said: “Given most buildings last over 100 years, it is important development is not rushed to ensure it is in the public interest.
“DAs for well-designed developments that meet the local planning rules are always going to be resolved more quickly than DAs that don’t, or that are particularly complex; that’s just common sense. But there are ways to streamline the process: pre-DA meetings between developers and councils can help iron out problems ahead of time, and the e-lodgement process is a good one.”
Philip Ruddock, the mayor of Hornsby shire whose council approved 1153 last year in 65 days, on average, said: “I don’t get complaints about significant delays in processing times. My view is that if you want to develop in a way which reflects the desires and aspirations of the global community, you’ll get quick decisions.
“If proposals are cheap and nasty, they will be questioned (by council staff). The more questions your applications invoke, sometimes the greater delays while they are looked at.
“I say this to the bigger developers: give us the best type of development and think about what is going to improve the amenity of our area, in keeping with the bushland shire and its unique character, you won’t have too much problems.”
Ku-ring-gai Council’s spokeswoman said complying development is a faster development approval process and can be issued in as little as 20 days, whereas the median processing times for all applications determined by the council was 78 days in 2016-17.
The planning department said Sydney would need about 725,000 additional homes over the next 20 years to accommodate a growing and ageing population.
I say this to the bigger developers: give us the best type of development and think about what is going to improve the amenity of our area, in keeping with the bushland shire and its unique character, you won’t have too much problems — Mayor Philip Ruddock
The latest Australian Bureau of Statistics figures show 70,000 home approvals were granted statewide last year, and Western Sydney remains the epicentre of the state’s housing construction with 27,540 new homes approved in the year to November 2017.
“NSW is the number one state in the nation for housing approvals and continues to far exceed the Premier’s Priority Housing Target of 50,000 approvals per year which improves housing supply and helps to support housing affordability,” Minister for Planning and Housing, Anthony Roberts, said.
The Greater Sydney Commission says the commission will continue to work closely with the Department of Planning and councils to establish six- to 10-year housing targets to create long-term housing supply.
With the impending (Sydney Metro) northwest rail line set for completion next year, the northwest Sydney suburb of Box Hill is expected to see significant growth as access to public transport is improved — Nearmap executive, Shane Preston
DA LEADERBOARD (average approval times)
1. Wollondilly (29 days)
2. Camden, Campbelltown, Hawkesbury (39 days)
3. Canterbury-Bankstown (42 days)
4. Northern Beaches, Randwick, Waverley (52 days)
5. North Sydney (57 days)
6. The Hills (62 days)
7. Bayside (64 days)
8. Hornsby (65 days)
9. Parramatta (76 days)
10. City of Sydney, Ku-ring-gai, Mosman (78 days)
11. Inner West, Penrith (79 days)
12. Blue Mountains (85 days)
13. Ryde (89 days)
14. Willoughby (90 days)
15. Woollahra (112 days)
16. Cumberland (125 days)
* Fairfield (25 days), Blacktown (39), Liverpool (47), Lane Cove (50)
Note: Council performance is based on the average number of days it took for approving DAs in 2016/17. * Fairfield, Blacktown, Liverpool and Lane Cove Council’s data is for 2015-16.
PLANS FOR THE FUTURE
A CITYWIDE planning strategy capable of producing an extra 10,650 new dwellings in The Hills Shire by 2021-22 has seen Celestino continue to work closely with The Hills Council on development applications to unlock land for future housing and jobs.
Celestino’s $2 billion The Gables master planned community in Box Hill will create 4,100 new homes when completed by 2025, including a town centre, primary school and two sporting fields.
And the suburb of Box Hill itself looks set to grow by a massive 2,149.3 per cent to 2036, going from 314 homes in 2016 to 7,056 in 20 years’ time, latest research by property consultants .id shows.
The Hills population would increase from 170,828 people in 2018 to 250,971 by 2036, by their estimations, representing a 46.91 per cent increase. The biggest boom area would be Kellyville, where 11,724 new homes are expected to be built by 2036. Rouse Hill would grow by 97.2 per cent, from 2,517 homes in 2016 to 4,964 by 2036.
The Gables Aerial Footage — July 2017
The planning department says Sydney would need about 725,000 additional homes over the next 20 years to accommodate a growing and ageing population, and forecast The Hills in Sydney’s northwest priority growth area as being the seventh-largest supplier of Greater Sydney housing stock to 2021-22.
It said Hornsby Council would supply 4,400 of Greater Sydney’s 196,750 new dwellings to 2022 and Ku-ring-gai would supply 3,550. Parramatta would be the biggest housing supplier with 22,250 new dwellings, followed by Blacktown with 17,600.
“Our first residents moved in prior to Christmas 2017 and there are approximately 90 homes under construction today,” Celestino chief executive officer John Vassallo said of The Gables, currently the largest master planned community in The Hills.
He said The Hills Council had been integral to the project’s success. “Authority approvals are normally a risk for large masterplanned communities, but this has not been the case at The Gables where all levels of authority approvals have been received on time,” Mr Vassallo explained.
He said The Gables was designed and submitted for rezoning in June 2013 and rezoned in February 2015. The first land lots were released to the market in August 2015 and so far more than 650 land lots have sold. Available for purchase are apartments, townhouses, terraces and blocks of land ranging from 450 sqm to up to 2,000 sqm in size.
Chris Johnson of the Urban Taskforce, Australia’s peak property industry group, said apartment living was “actually the best way to accommodate growth. And a lot of people, especially the younger generation, are keen about a cosmopolitan, buzzy style of inner-city living”.
He said that there’s a big misunderstanding that big projects don’t add value to an area.
“(They) contribute quite a lot of funding back to the very infrastructure that people say is needed,” Mr Johnson, a former NSW Government architect building master plans for iconic structures such as Sydney Olympic Park, said.
The Gables Fly Through
Mr Vassallo said Celestino had signed a voluntary planning agreement with The Hills Council to dedicate 85 hectares of open space and a community facilities building. “The open space will include rebuilding the natural waterways, a 10-acre lake, two sporting facilities and nine pocket parks — the first of which was delivered in September last year,” he said.
“In addition to these great amenities, The Gables primary school and town centre including retail and commercial space, will provide a jobs boost for the local economy.”
For the year ending June 30, 2017, The Hills Council received $52.6 million in Section 94 contributions income, used towards maintenance and construction of infrastructure in the shire.
Hornsby and Ku-ring-gai Councils received $12 and $13 million in Sec 94 contributions each, however Hornsby Council’s spokesman said “the border change makes it impossible to give exact figures”. He was making reference to council revenue from the boundary changes imposed on Hornsby by the State Government, which put ratepayers from areas including Epping and Carlingford into Parramatta Council’s area.
A SIMPLE GUIDE TO DEVELOPMENT APPLICATIONS
Click here for the State Government’s ‘5 stages to faster, more efficient assessments’
Local government (council)
■ Minor, low-impact home, shop or business improvement projects, known as “exempt development” or “complying development”, don’t require planning or building approval. Other developments need consent and a form must be lodged with your local council, alongside a development application.
■ City planning officers determine the majority of DAs under delegated authority of council.
■ Across NSW, council staff currently make about 69 per cent of all DA and complying development certificate determinations. Councillors were making about two per cent of the DA decisions but from March 1 they will make none.
■ The fees for DAs are mandated under the Environmental Planning and Assessment Regulation 2000, and range from $110 for developments up to $5,000 to $15,875 for developments over $10 million (plus an extra $1.19 for each $1,000 or part of $1,000 by which the estimated cost exceeds $10 million).
■ Many NSW councils offer an online application tracking service.
■ Complaints about the general administrative conduct of councils, councillors and council staff can be made to the Office of Local Governmentor the NSW Ombudsman, while complaints about alleged corrupt conduct of councillors or council staff can be made to the Independent Commission Against Corruption (ICAC).
Independent Hearing and Assessment Panel
■ DAs with a dollar value of over $5 million but under $30 million to go before a mandatory Independent Hearing and Assessment Panel, known as an IHAP, from March 1.
■ IHAPS also deal with:
● DAs where the applicant or owner is the council, a councillor, councillor’s family member, council staff member, or a state or federal MP;
● DAs that get 10 or more objections;
● DAs accompanied by a voluntary planning agreement;
● DAs seeking to depart by more than 10 per cent from a development standard; and
● applications associated with a higher risk of corruption (that is, residential flat buildings assessed under SEPP 65 and demolition of heritage items).
■ All meetings are open to the public and will be recorded and made publicly available.
■ All IHAPs will have: a chair approved by the minister for planning with expertise in law or government and public administration (casting vote), two independent experts chosen by the local council from a pool approved by the minister, and one council-appointed community member who represents the council ward in which the development is to take place.
Sydney Planning Panels
■ Five independent Sydney Planning Panels make decisions about significant
development proposals in their region.
■ Currently, the projects they assess are valued over $20 million but from March 1 that threshold will be increased to $30 million.
■ The panels also act as the relevant planning authority in some decisions when directed by the Minister for Planning or the Greater Sydney Commission, undertake rezoning reviews, and provide advice on planning and development matters when requested.
■ New planning panel chairs are: Carl Scully (Sydney Eastern City Planning Panel), Justin Doyle (Sydney Western City Planning Panel), Professor Helen Lochhead (Sydney South Planning Panel), and Peter Debnam (Sydney North Planning Panel). The new chair of the Sydney Central Planning Panel is in the final stages of appointment.
Schofields fly-over