Toowoomba Regional Council to consider starting work on new planning scheme document
The Toowoomba Regional Council is expected to begin a work soon on a new version of its most important planning document that could take up to five years to complete.
Council
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Councillors will vote today at committee meetings on a proposal to create a new regional planning scheme by 2025, which dictates the rules and guidelines for development across the local government area.
It comes eight years after the TRC endorsed its original planning scheme in 2012, and a year after its planning department completed a review that concluded a new document was required.
According to land use and community principal Heath Martin, the council will need to advise the State Government of its intention to start work on the new scheme.
“The council must give a notice to the State Government advising of that decision and provide supporting information that will assist the state to prepare a notice to the council that sets out the process the council must follow in making the new planning scheme,” he wrote in his report to the council.
“The report recommends that the council resolve to make a planning scheme under section 18 of the Planning Act and identifies the proposed plan-making process that will be provided to the State Government in support of that decision.”
The process will be broken up into three stages and is expected to cost more than $5 million in operational materials, services, labour costs and other expenditure.
Sections of the development industry and within the TRC’s planning department have acknowledged the age of the planning scheme, as well as its consistency at times with community expectations.
This was highlighted in previous years by the councillors voting down projects due to pressure from residents, despite the proposals complying with planning scheme.
The current document has been updated numerous times since its inception and is up to its 24th amendment.
The meeting will start from 9am.