OPENING ADDRESS
Deputy Premier of NSW - Hon Dr Andrew Refshauge, Minister for Planning, Housing & Aboriginal Affairs

RESPONSE
Bob Harrison, President of the Institution Surveyors NSW

Michael Parkinson
Chairman, Cumberland Group of Surveyors

I'd like to thank the Cumberland Group's Major Sponsor, Legalco whose generous sponsorship of this group is of great assistance. Legalco provides survey search and title and business information.

We have an excellent program arranged for you today starting with innovations in planning covering some of the latest initiatives introduced by Planning NSW. Today we are honoured to have the Deputy Premier of NSW, the Honorable Dr Andrew Refshauge, to officially open the seminar. Dr Refshauge is also the Minister for Planning, Minister for Housing and Minister for Aboriginal Affairs and has postponed meetings to be here with us today.

Dr Refshauge's department has been very supportive of this seminar for many years and I'd like everyone to give him a very warm welcome.

Dr Andrew Refshauge

Thank you very much Michael and thank you for inviting me to give your opening address to this development seminar. I would like to acknowledge that we do stand on the traditional land of the Eora people. The land we live in today bears almost no resemblance to the traditional landscape of the Eora people their dense rocky scrubland, the tranquil waterways are now transformed very much into a bustling vibrant modern city.

Greater Sydney today glitters with the silver towers that signify us as a vibrant harbourside but global city and in the 200 plus years since white invasion, planning authorities of all persuasions have shifted their focus from strictly regulating land use to encouraging sustainable growth. In (Gov.) Phillip's fledging colony planning meant stringent controls of who could go where and do what. Convicts to the west of the Quay, now the Rocks, officers and the Governor around the southern and eastern shores. Garden Island was strictly that and the first zoning law stipulated that no housing or development along the immediate shores of the tank stream for fear of polluting the colony's fragile water supply which unfortunately they eventually did.

Now planning authorities work with business and the community to focus on encouraging economic growth, which generates long term jobs and also lifestyle benefits commensurate with the prosperity of the nation. In his book Cities of Tomorrow, Sir Peter Hall talks about how in the late 20th century conventional planning obsessed with setting inflexible land use regulations gave way to encouraging urban growth, to harnessing cities as machines for wealth creation. He goes as far to say that the planner increasingly identified with his traditional adversity, the developer, the gamekeeper turned poacher. I don't know that I endorse that turn of phrase that suggests a mercenary agenda but I do know that the keystone of success for contemporary planning and sustainable development is a productive consultative partnership between government, business and the community.

Sir Peter Hall tells how in the late 1970s the glum British Planning Authorities looked to the exuberant Americans for inspiration; how they contrasted the barren desolation of inner Liverpool with the vibrant downtown of Boston full of life, colour, excitement, booming sales and expanding jobs.

They discovered that the magic recipe for urban revitalisation consisted of a new kind of creative partnership between the city government and the private sector, free of the unyielding regulations of Whitehall that traditionally imposed upon its cities. It was a formula that had already turned around Boston and was transforming Baltimore's harbour. Both cities had been racked with urban decline since the 1950s, both are now transformed into great showcases of urban revitalisation. That's now been repeated at Covent Garden, the London docklands, and scores of American industrial cities and this as Sir Peter Hall says, is the path of an enterprising city that can hold its own on the world stage.

Here, we are well acquainted with the benefits of productive partnerships, our greater metropolitan region now boasts three cities of enterprise, of proud global standing. Where scarred disused sites like Darling Harbour, Cockle Bay, Green Square, South Sydney, Newcastle Harbour and Mt Penang, now characterise a vibrant new lifestyle for their communities. They show how planning authorities when they shake off the heavy shackles of protracted bureaucracy and overt regulation and when they work in partnership with the private sector, can make a resoundingly positive and enduring difference to peoples lifestyles and in fact their life.

This contemporary partnership, this commitment to collaboration, this long term perspective and capacity for innovation, have spearheaded our governments approach to planning and I'm proud that our agenda has reaped benefits and very powerful results for the community and for business and I'm proud that those benefits have been broad and far reaching and that they will endure for future generations.

With our explicit agenda to generate economic growth comes implicit responsibilities, responsibilities that resonate beyond that rigid matrix of investment and infrastructure. It is in fact a triple bottom line. Economic yes of course, and that commitment to growth is what drives a contemporary global city but we're also committed to meeting our social bottom line and our environmental bottom line, a commitment to the quality of life and lifestyle opportunities that make economic growth meaningful and worthwhile for the long term.

I'll give you some examples of our partnership approach to realise some key milestones for the people of NSW. Most notably recently we have announced the Plan First Reforms. With these we have acknowledged that an effective sustainable development agenda can only take place within an effective efficient planning system. This means the process by which we travel to meet our challenges very much determines how successful the results will prove to be. As such I was pleased to announce on June 4th this year after exhaustive consultation with industry, and with the community, the most comprehensive overhaul of the State's planning system since the introduction of the Environmental Planning and Assessment Act in 1979.

Our Plan First initiative will cut red tape, in the processing, by 95%, delivering to business and the community an estimated savings of $360 million per year. Industry and land owners are currently hampered by a system that operates as a complicated web. Any single block of land can be affected by up to 70 plans. One block of land 70 plans. We now have over 5000 local Council and State Government documents with regard to land use and planning.

Under Plan First, every land owner across the State will be able to go to one local plan for their area to seek very clearly all the planning policies that affect their individual land holdings. Importantly to get this program under way this year's budget well the budget just delivered for the next coming financial year starting in a week's time has allocated $4 million to begin the roll out of Plan First by developing regional strategies. Additional funding will be generated by a user charge of .064 cents in the dollar on development applications for major building works with a threshold of $50,000 and I certainly welcome the measured response from the industry to those charges, the industry believes in their public statements it is a small price to pay for the efficiency of the planning system.

Importantly the reforms have been championed by business. They have been championed as achieving the holy grail for the property industry by securing a faster, more efficient process that assures consistency and certainly and as well embraces greater community participation. I thank your industry for your participation, your support in making Plan First a reality, and I look forward to seeing these reforms work better for building public spaces, better for building transport and better for building communities.

Late last year I also announced a 15 year program to provide more than 89,000 new home sites for Sydneys families. We are moving to take the pressure off the developed areas of Sydney by significantly increasing the amount of land for sale across 3 key western corridors, west, south west and the north west. Within 3 years we aim to double the number of lots available annually. Importantly, we've also made an iron clad commitment not to repeat mistakes of the previous government. Instead we want to work with the industry to ensure that roads, transport, health services and schools are delivered at the same time as the new housing land.

This 15 year blueprint is a significant step forward not only in ensuring steady land supply but in giving certainty to both industry and communities as to where and how land will be released and to ensure that we can deliver on our commitment to infrastructure and services as well as protecting the environment with sustainable appropriate development we have established across government a CEOs working group reporting to a sub committee of Cabinet. I chair that sub committee.

The new Metropolitan CEOs group creates an invaluable forum to explore the issues associated with growth and to ensure that everything is delivered in an integrated way. Some of the first actions of this important group include the 15 year growth projections for released areas resulting in a set of fast track actions for releases not yet zoned and investigating funding strategies and mechanisms for infrastructure with an immediate focus on delivering public transport infrastructure. Again, partnership bringing about a meaningful real action based on a common vision and a spirit of collaboration.

I'd also like to talk a little bit about building certification. Complaints about certifiers have been a recurring theme since I became Minister for Planning a few years ago and the government has taken action recently to address this problem. Many of you would be aware that I announced the establishment of a Joint Select Committee on the quality of buildings in NSW last March. The enquiry is now examining broad issues of building quality building certification and building licensing. It is due to hand down its final report in mid July.

While not in any way wanting to pre-empt the findings of the Enquiry, I have acted to address the poor performance of the Building Surveyors and Allied Professionals Accreditation Scheme BISAP by stripping that organisation of its accreditation power. Over the past year there have been serious complaints lodged with BISAP but none of them were dealt with, obviously a totally unacceptable situation. Now complaint investigation and accreditation of certifiers will be the responsibility of the Director General of the Department of Planning. The Department is already acting to improve accountability through the auditing process and this process is continuing and the department will refer any certifier who falls short of their duty to protect the public to the Administrative Decisions Tribunal.

We have to ensure there is a system in place which protects consumers when they are making their biggest investment buying a home and I'm confident that the actions that I've taken along with the findings of the Joint Enquiry will provide a way forward so that industry can get on with the job and consumers can be confident that they're getting the value they require.

I'll also mention a little bit about bushfire prevention. Earlier this month I spoke in Parliament in support of the Rural Fires & Environmental Assessment Legislation Amendment Bill. Bushfires of course have long been an immutable feature of the Australian summer. It's a season that's hallmarked by surf carnivals, beach picnics, long days at the cricket but the bushfire presents summer's inevitable enduring dark side. It is perhaps Australia's most foreboding icon.

Last year, once again, a conventional happy Christmas was irrevocably marred by the terrible knowledge that thousands of people were fighting to save hundreds of homes and properties across the State. I was acting Premier at the time and it was my unfortunate duty to visit the families that had lost their homes and their treasures and tried to offer words of comfort, when words of comfort were hopelessly inadequate.

They followed a grim tradition of bushfires in Christmases past, but with each terrible event we learn a little bit more about the nature of the beast and armed with that knowledge we can take action to reduce the destruction next time around.

That Bill I was talking about has now passed through Parliament, its amended two key Acts of Parliament in setting a stronger more streamlined system of planning bushfire protection. We are acting decisively to put these measures in place well before the next bushfire season. Our approach reflects a high priority that this government has placed on protecting lives and property from the devastation and destruction that bushfires leave in their wake.

The Amendment now means a streamlined and clear approvals process for bushfire hazard reduction. The several approvals previously required from a range of agencies will now be reduced to one single approval from Council. The former system hampered land owners and authorities by setting a complex range of requirements obstructing a coordinated rapid and appropriate work schedule. By eliminating the red tape and the document shuffling associated with the hazard reductions approval process, we are giving people much greater capacity to put in place quickly and effectively the measures that prevent loss and destruction.

Councils are now obliged to identify and map bushfire prone land and to have the Rural Fire Service Commissioner verify the accuracy of those maps. An information package will explain the new system to Councils and assist them in reviewing their local Environmental Plans to embrace bushfire mapping. In addition, I will issue directions to Council under Section 117 of the EP&A Act to consult with the Commissioner when preparing new Local Environmental Plans.

Development applications in bushfire prone areas will be referred to the Rural Fire Service to ensure the design minimises risks and the service will have a new approval power for residential subdivisions and other sensitive developments in bushfire prone areas.

The Amendment adopted the recommendations of an inter department committee of State Agencies, they are reforms driven by people who know the issues, and I believe, know the solutions.

In moving to enshrine bushfire protection provisions within two major Acts of Parliament rather than putting in place a planing policy or subordinate legislation, we acknowledge the gravity and the importance of this issue, the non-negotiables needed to make an enduring difference.

It was the Architect Daniel Burnham, the designer of Chicago's classic early skyscrapers, who said "Make no little plans, they have no magic to stir men's blood and probably themselves will not be realised. Make big plans, aim high in hope and work, remembering that a noble logical diagram once recorded will never die but long after we are gone will be a living thing asserting itself with ever growing insistency."

Each of these projects I've talked about today demonstrate the remarkable things we can do when we work together. When we make big plans, not necessarily big in scale, but big in their capacity to make an enduring difference to the life and lifestyle of our community. They prove that we can indeed meet that triple bottom line, the economic, social and environmental and they show how by engaging with industry empowering the community by listening to each other's needs and responding in a meaningful way, by initiating sustainable appropriate development within an inclusive process, we can make a powerful and lasting contribution to a better urban environment.

Thank you for asking me to be with you today.

APPLAUSE

MICHAEL PARKINSON

Thanks very much Dr Refshauge. As a mark of the Cumberland Group's appreciation for opening our Seminar, I'd like to present you with a token of our appreciation.

APPLAUSE

I'd now like to introduce Bob Harrison, the President of the Institution of Surveyors, NSW, could everyone give Bob a warm welcome.

APPLAUSE

BOB HARRISON

Thank you for the opportunity to talk to the Cumberland Planning & Development Seminar. You have just heard a pretty marvellous delivery from Dr Refshauge which has outlined the framework and the goals. Let's call it the big picture. I think the marvellous thing about this opportunity you've got here today is to fill in some of the interstices of that framework with knowledge and the ability to improve our society.

I was listening to Margaret Throsby yesterday on radio, I don't often do that, but one of the people speaking to her was Professor Thom and he is no stranger to this gathering. He was certainly here last year. He was talking about the need for us in the 21st century and I just remind a few of you people here who lived through the 20th this is the 21st century, the need in that time that we have in front of us to preserve our society, the survival is going to be really important with the emphasis that's coming from planning for the future, sustainable and economically viable development and the only way we're going to be able to do it is to have good surveyors, good planners, good information and good Cumberland seminars. So I think that Dr Refshauge's opening illustrated to you that the government is on our side, they are trying to make things better for us as operators, for us as instrumentalities, and for us as people who are going to live as a result of our actions.

We have to undo some of the damage that's been done, we have to create less damage in the future, we have to learn more today to be able to live tomorrow so I think the seminar you've got in front of you today is very important and I hope you enjoy it and network with your mates and learn from them as well.

Thank you very much Michael

APPLAUSE

iPLAN
TONY HART
Director, Planning NSW

MICHAEL PARKINSON

Our next speaker is Tony Hart. Tony is the director of Planning Information and Development. Previously Tony was Land Information Systems Consultant and GIS software and data development for ten years. Tony was also Director of the State Plan Information Council from 1986 to 1992 and is a Geographer and Economist by training. I'd like you all to give Tony a warm welcome.

APPLAUSE

TONY HART

Good morning everyone. I've got about 25 minutes I think to talk about iPlan. In listening to the Minister speak this morning I'm very much reminded of some very claret covered lunches with a previous Surveyor General Don Grant who I think was very much involved in your organisation in the past and he reminded me that on the first fleet there was a Surveyor General for NSW, the first one Augustus Alt, and one of the things that he always used to say to me when I worked in the Department of Lands with him was that the surveyors of this colony as it then was and Augustus Alt in particular, were explorers, they were surveyors and importantly they were town planners. Some of those functions have perhaps been removed into other areas of expertise but I'm somewhat humbled I must admit to be talking to a group this large which has a lot of background in the town planning business. I've been in town planning for four months.

My main job is to deliver information to the planning fraternity throughout NSW. Information that will service the strategic planning that's going on in the Department of Planning, but also information that will help the private sector and as the Minister said to me a few weeks ago it will help the single mother with a child of 12. Probably to find out where all the swimming pools are so that she can keep her children occupied.

So today I'm going to update you on a major information initiative that the Department of Planning has been working on for the last couple of years, which in the last four months is now beginning to get to a point where we're actually delivering something rather than talking about it and conceptualising about it. I've had ten years in the private sector and I'm now very much involved in getting deliverables rather than conceptualising.

So today's aim is to give you an update on developments, I want to actually show you some of the applications and services that will be available under iPlan and to talk a little bit about future developments.

One of the things I was asked to touch on also this morning was the concept of DA's on line. I'll deal initially with the concept of iPlan and the business of different layers of information and how you might access them in the planning process, and then close off with some discussions about DA's on line.

So what is iPlan. When I first arrived in the department I had to ask the question, 'what is iPlan?' I got comments like it's a framework, it's a concept, it's a strategic vision. I've tried to change that concept to something along these lines a Statewide e-service network that delivers planning information and services.

The idea is that its integrated, its computer based, which up until now very little planning information has been, importantly its location focussed you can click on a map, you can put in a street address, you can put in a lot and DP. It's about data being made spatial. Also importantly its accessible to everybody, not just the professionals, its accessible to the man in the street via the Internet.

So why iPlan? I think the Minister gave you a very good example of how complicated our planning process has become over the last 200 years. I think one of the figures was 5000 documents about individual pieces of land. I was up at Pittwater a couple of days ago and the planner there pointed out to me there were over a billion combinations of planning restrictions and different types of developments that you can do. When you multiply them all together against the number of pieces of land in that area, over a billion combinations so people have got to absorb, people like you and planners have got to absorb before they can make decisions about developments. So iPlan is about trying to make this a lot simpler and it's easy to say and I haven't worked out how to do that yet, but that's one of the objectives. We need to consolidate all this data into one source. At the moment you've got to go to umpteen departments, local authorities and to State Planning. We want it to relate to individual parcels of land rather than larger areas where you have to make decisions, make judgments. Geographically accessible, it needs to be easy to access, and essentially remove the mystique behind this whole planning process.

So what are we building? I don't want to go into great detail on this but in concept, and in actuality it is an Internet based system that overlays at the moment data about planning from different sources. Some of its Internet based, some of the data is now beginning to sit in a geographic data base in the centre of the network which gives us more reliability about preparing data from different sources, but also gives us much faster responses.

We're in the early stages of iPlan in an operational sense I think we've been thinking about it for two years. There is now an iPlan portal so that you can go onto iPlan.gov dot whatever whatever which is a single portal anybody in the State can go to. This will be launched in the middle of next month. It's currently in beta testing in the planning department running on our intranet. From that portal you can address a number of applications and services. Plan connect will give you planning rules for particular pieces of land and will progressively cover the whole State.

Industry lands and business lands are systems that enable you to identify all the industry and business zoned land in the greater metropolitan area. DA's on line is an embryonic service that we're now beginning to talk seriously with local authorities about. Intracker is an internal system for tracking the DA's that the department is working on but it is a system that could be made available to smaller local authorities, and to those local authorities that haven't got their own automated DA systems at the moment.

Our roll out plans. We're in the middle of roll out at the moment. Industry lands and business lands is already launched publicly already available on the net. It's been around for about 2 years but the technology has been improved and the data has been updated. We've launched the iPlan portal within the department and when I can get the Minister to give me a date that he wants to be at the public launch, we'll be doing a public launch towards the middle of next month.

Let me give you a few examples of what the system will enable you to do. I haven't endeavoured to do this on line in real time, its too dangerous to come to hotels and cope with their PABX and try to get online to the Internet so these are screen shots and I apologise for that. The first thing you see when you come onto iPlan is a portal that offers you a number of applications. The first one is planning resources and all this does is take you point to a part of a map, go to a region, it then gives you a list and it's a dynamic and growing list of planning resources in that region. It will usually, where they exist, refer you to any planning website that a local government authority has got and in a lot of cases will take you straight to their LEP.

So I'll now talk to you about the industrial lands system, this is an overview of the area that industrial lands and business lands covers. It runs on the Internet it runs fairly fast, I have a problem with the various applications we've developed over the last two years. They are different technical architectures, they handle data in different ways, they work with different data bases so there is a real problem of integration there. One of my intents over the next few months is to bring those 3 applications together so that not just merely under an umbrella of iPlan but they're actually integrated in the sense that they're talking to the same version of the digital cadastral data base and they're talking to dynamic data and you can rely on the integration. At the moment they are a little bit different from each other and the look and feel of them is different.

So with a system like this regardless of local government areas in the greater metropolitan region from Port Stephens to Kiama, you can identify any land that is industrial that comes up on the right hand side with details of the land, how big it is and so on, you can do a search for individual pieces of land according to size, according to whether it is potential or actually developed.

The system zooms in as you wish and identifies the pieces of land, relates back to the list on the right and, as you zoom in, gives you the identifiers for that land. Now this is not a dynamic system in that the data relates to the end of December of last year and at the moment we have to go out and update it every six months. In the ideal world this would be being dynamically updated as zonings change and as the DCDB and property boundaries change. We've got to address that, but at the moment this is a system that a lot of the large property developers in NSW are using. It is available on the web you don't need any great technology to use it. We've even got it to a point now where we identify the actual properties rather than just putting a dot on them. So its polygon based as well. You can bring in data from other sources if you wanted to see say acid sulphate soils this will connect out to another web site, which is not run by our department it would connect out to the cannery website and can overlay natural resources information.

The features of the current release of industry lands which is now as I mentioned two years old this is a very recent release. We've increased the geographical coverage, it covers, and we've got tremendous cooperation from local authorities and utilities in the region to provide us with information, it now includes business or commercial zones which it didn't before, it was only industrial. We've improved the data quality I think the base mapping behind the system is a lot better than it was two years ago. You can query on individual properties by street name or by identifier and the technology is a fair bit better, it was very much geared to what we could achieve using Genamap (GIS software) in the previous version, this version is basically technology independent. So it is quite an advance.

The sort of thing we'll be able to do, now this is plan connect which allows you to see planning instruments. So you can zoom in now I'm going to zoom in on this fairly fast because we've just discovered a piece of rather you beaut technology that is now sitting on top of our original architecture and this technology allows you to zoom in to a map of NSW merely by pushing a mouse, you zoom out by pulling the mouse back to you and this is across the Internet and its almost instantaneous, its brilliant technology luckily its Australian and to be honest I've never seen anything like this.

But the point about it is to make this data easy to access naturally by people who are not professionals. A lot of people these days use computer games, they understand a mouse, they play solitaire if they do nothing else on their Microsoft windows systems at home. So this is the sort of natural way. They don't have to draw rectangles or point at things and wait for the map to refresh in front of them. So this is the sort of zooming in that you can do across the web as quickly as I'm clicking now. So you can zoom right in to individual blocks of land within an area and you can click on any one of these blocks of land and it will pull up the relevant planning instrument. At the moment it only pulls up the LEP or an SEP that's relevant to that region or an REP. I've got some grand ideas that we might be able to take the LEPs and hook them against each piece of land and that data becomes an attribute of the piece of land, rather than you having to view a scanned document. But that's a fair way off and a bit of investment. But thats the concept of Plan First that you will be able to identify as simply as this, click on a piece of land and see the planning restraints and opportunities that exist on an individual piece of land.

The sort of things you can also do it handles it's a bit slower when it handles aerial photographs and so on but you can overlay data on top of aerial photographs so you can actually relate this planning data to areas you can see which is very important for non professionals. This is the sort of document that will come up and here what we've taken is an LEP of Leichhardt, clicked on it and started to pull up the Local Environment Plan on the left.

This is working now in the department and when we release it this new technology will be sitting on top of Plan Connect. You can also download the documents so you can have them on your own machines.

One of the important things about systems like this is that the technology is all well and good but the key thing is the data. What I'm concerned about is that local Councils have got LEPs they're changing them every day. Some Councils keep them up on their own system keep them up to date, others don't. the important thing is for us now to start looking at our data management practices so that something like iPlan can actually be delivering really the most useful data. At the moment it's a guideline its like an index if you like to where is the data. We've got to make a fairly major leap forward to get to the next stage.

I'm going to spend a few moments talking about DAs on line which is a little bit less colourful. This is the sort of thing that we have been building and thinking about for some time now. The idea is that you can lodge a DA through the iPlan website and the iPlan website will if its required send that DA electronically to the local authority that's relevant. Or it will tell you that no this local authority doesn't receive electronic LGA's you've got to jump in the car and go to the counter but it will tell you where to go. I've got some serious questions in my mind about the importance of DA's on line and whether it's a high priority exercise. Clearly it does provide services to the community and services to builders who are putting in fairly simple applications but for the large and complex ones I'm not convinced yet and I know a whole load of local authorities are questioning whether DA's on line is really worth the investment and are there not other higher priority things that we should be investing in.

So over the next few months we're going to be talking to a number of authorities and organisations like yourselves to try and assess the business case for DA's on line. Whenever I talk to my people they say oh its lovely technology its all XML and GML and so on and I say that's not the issue, the issue is whether there is a business case. Because to create this application is a significant cost, we've already spent a fair bit on it so we're at a point of go - no go. I've got to make a business decision fairly soon as to whether DA's goes on and I'll be very interested I'll be here until morning tea, so I'd be interested if anybody has got any thoughts on that and wants to grab me.

The concept is dead simple but the technology sitting behind it is not that easy. There are not many standards for us to use, and we could be jumping in too early and if you have a look at the Internet I've only found one pure DA's on line site. There is lots of simple permitting but where you actually have to put in detailed information the only place I've seen is Singapore and that's one authority, here in NSW there is 170 odd authorities that we need to be providing information to through DA's on line so the concept of DA's who are the customers, Councils, developers, property owners, builders. What are the benefits, that is the question I'm asking now. And we've really got to come to grips with this. It's a great idea we all talk about it, we all see it as a great service, but I'm not actually seeing anything on the bottom line yet.

One of the big issues is well not every Council but there are about 5 different DA processing systems in the Councils of NSW. We might be better off building 5 separate links to those groups of Councils instead of building a sort of standard Internet web based approach and I need to know what other priorities Councils have got. So where to now? We need better consultation I'm finding that some Councils as I mentioned are saying this isn't what we really need, there are other things that are more important. So we're moving forward with it but before we get down to this technical stuff at the bottom and the delivery of e-payment systems because we've got to find some way of collecting that levy and auditing the levies so we know how much revenue is going to come in for building systems like iPlan, before we do that we're going to be out consulting, talking to you.

The concept is very very simple provide the public with a single starting point that connects importantly all the referral agencies so automatically the system knows that if a particular type of DA comes in it sends it off to the appropriate departments you don't have to worry about it. it also can deliver a system that would supplement or could be taken up by some of the smaller Councils and it could be a service bureau as I say here for low end Councils and it would include an on line payments gateway but I'm not going to make any commitments there until we've really got the business case down pat.

Where are we heading with iPlan generally, for the next financial year the first thing is we're doing a technical architectural review of the whole system. I've got to make some tough decisions in the next month as to which technology we're going to run with how we put this together and what data management practices we bring into place. We're moving towards some improved technologies we're taking the external web hosting to a company called AC3 which is outside our department but has got lots of lovely big computers and flashing lights and so on and gives you very fast Internet access and also gives me security because you won't be able to get in through our own firewall and we're putting that Idelf technology to give us this very quick panning and zooming across the map. There will be better spatial integration of the data. One of the big issues is that we do have a DCDB maintained by LPI but the Councils, a lot of the Councils, have more up to date and probably better quality DCDBs of their own, they've taken the DCDB and modified it and when I get an LEP a digital LEP from a Council it contains a modified DCDB so we're in danger of having two DCDBs for the State the one maintained by LPI and the one that's maintained by individual Council.

So we've got to make a few very important inter departmental decisions over the next few months. We'll be moving iPlan completely to vector data and polygon data so it won't just be pictures, the previous designs were all about images and we'll be consulting strongly to identify the key applications, is DAs on line the next one or should there be some others and importantly data. We're devising a data management framework which will handle all different types of planning data that the department is responsible for and data that's held by other departments that we will pull into iPlan, all this has to be consistent, otherwise you will be getting a situation of garbage in and garbage out so we can only handle this by understanding the data that we're dealing with and having a consistent way of doing it.

So those are the future directions in the next 12 months for iPlan after we've done the public launch next month so that gives you a summary of iPlan. I hope I've kept to my time reasonably thank you very much indeed I hope you found that useful.

APPLAUSE

MICHAEL PARKINSON

DA's on line is an interesting concept and I can't see any reason why it can't run in parallel with the existing system, and perhaps a system where surveyors and their clients can upload statements of environmental effects in PDF format and plans of proposed subdivision in either PDF or DXF format may work quite well.

PLANNING NSW's New Metropolitan Development Program

Evan Jones, Director of Sydney Strategy, Planning NSW

PLANNING NSW's NEW METRO DEVELOPMENT PROGRAM
EVAN JONES

MICHAEL PARKINSON

Our next speaker is Evan Jones. Evan is a town planner and urban designer and has worked around Australia including Western Australia, Victoria and NSW. Evan ran the State Town Planning system in Western Australia before recently coming to Planning NSW. This includes approving every subdivision in Western Australia at State level. Evan and his team recently won a prestigious international award for the Livable Neighbourhoods Program in Western Australia. This program has been very effective in Western Australia for overcoming urban sprawl. I'd like you all to give Evan a very warm welcome thank you.

APPLAUSE

EVAN JONES

As I'm getting organised there are a few seats up the front if you guys down the back want to get a bit more comfortable. Two thank-yous. Michael thank you very much for the opportunity of speaking and an unbelievable promo that I seem to receive in your magazine so I'm not sure if in NSW its actually a benefit to be a public servant or to be accused of being dynamic and also having opinions, but we'll give it a crack today because we've got some fairly serious issues that we face and some real challenges, some really exciting things as we look forward as well.

One thing that we know from the censuses over a number of years is that Sydney's population has grown faster than forecast and that's leading to a very significant increased housing construction and demand for infrastructure.

We've been able to slow urban sprawl, land has been committed for new housing estates, its being used quickly and there is a need to release more land and to fund essential infrastructure so I guess that's the balanced line between all this but sitting underneath this as I'll unpick there are a series of issues that we've really got to come to grips with. We know the demand for housing in Sydney is increasing because Sydney is the dominant economic centre of the country, that economic viability is directly related to providing the need to provide appropriate housing, and the growth since 1995 has been the strongest period since the 1960s in fact the latest census that just came out showed that numerically Sydney has to accommodate more people actual numbers of people than it has ever done in any period in its past. So though the growth rates are slightly below the 60s, numerically more people here in the last five years than we've ever had to cope with at any stage in Sydney's past.

A lot more retiring Sydneysiders are staying here, and there we can start to see the population growth. We've got the 60's on the left, we have a spike in '86 but it sort of crested then fell away and this period 1996 - 2001 and our predictions forward show that growth rates are very significant. We averaged 1996-2001 about 52,000 people a year in 2001 about 56,000, majority of which has been fuelled by overseas migration. There is natural population increase, relatively static. Internal migration has been up and down but unlike periods in the past where we've lost people out of Sydney to go to other places, we've been keeping them and so we've got a significant ongoing issue. You are surveyors you'll get this, you know we have to do a Wagga about every ten months somewhere in Sydney now that's a pretty big ask for any city to cope with. We reached 4.14 million in 2001 we're looking at 4.5 million and 4.5 million around 2013 not 2021 as previously forecast. Less time to house more people, more people being worried about more growth, more people saying enough is enough but the economy booming, more people coming in.

The other issue to face is the drop in household size. In 1981 it was almost 3, 2.92, it went down to 2.73, it's about 2.7 in 2001 that seemed to have dropped off the graphic since this morning. So since the 70's we needed one extra dwelling for every about 1.9 people, now okay so what, so what? Well the so what is over the last 20 years the effect of that drop alone, so if we did nothing else we need another 110,000 houses in Sydney. So lifestyle changes, population comes in, smaller households, more housing needed.

How have we been trying to meet that demand? Sydneys is one of the success stories in this. We've been achieving it through a mix of 30% of new land release and 70% of urban consolidation. That has reversed the trend of people moving out of the inner middle suburbs, we don't get what the American cities had which was inner city blight, as the white flight went to the fringe of the US cities, we've maintained and compacted those areas we're encouraging urban consolidation development particularly around stations, Green Squares and so on and highlighting the constraints of urban sprawl so it's a 30/70 balance. Been very successful. Today I'm going to talk mostly about the 30% meaning the fringe and our challenges there but we're running out of the Green Squares, we're running out of the Ultimo Pyrmonts, and so we're going to have some very difficult issues to negotiate through with a community of local government about how we house the 70% in existing areas where a lot of people think enough is enough, you know but at the same time they're aging they're the ones that are forming the smaller households and they're the ones wanting the additional houses. So we've got some real dilemmas in that to work through but today I want to talk more about the 30%.

This just shows then the multi unit share of dwelling approvals in the Sydney region, from '84-85 moving up in a peak around '94-95 and being very consistent through that at being around 55% of the entire market. so a lot of people now in order to get proximity to employment proximity to the services the so called 'cappuccino strips' and so on are choosing multi unit development.

Fringe growth went from '93-94 to about 42% to around a third, new outer growth and that means the inner about 26% middle about 25% and established out at 22% so all existing areas taking significant additional population still the need for fringe growth to accommodate new housing in Sydney.

The problem as you will be acutely aware stocks have dropped to historically low levels by 1998 because few new areas were released, other areas are removed for environmental and other reasons, lot yields were declining so one of the huge dilemmas is notwithstanding we're asking for around 15 dwellings a hectare, you start taking out a recovery plan and creeks and a whole bunch of other stuff and you look at net yield across that parcel - yields are dropping and in many areas have reached over 80% of their development capacity. We don't do anything the cost of travel and transport will affect economic competitiveness, the character of Sydney will change there will be more pressure on the environment and there is already huge pressure for example on the Central Coast and the impact of the rail networks to bring into Sydney and all this has been all over the Sydney Morning Herald for the last 4 months since I've been here, it's a very active and live community debate.

The other issue is that housing prices will escalate further. Sales at West Hoxton Park at the edge of Liverpool about $2.5 million a hectare now coming over from WA I worked in Victoria before that we'd have had a whole room of dead surveyors if I'd said that because they would have all died of heart attacks. Translates to about $180,000 for a 300 metre square unserviced lot although new lots are averaging around 454 so significant price escalation into that too forcing people out of Sydney to the Central Coast to get affordable housing.

The Government has taken action as the Minister described it wants urban consolidation as well as for well located land and development of current and new release sites in the existing corridors. Extension of the existing corridors of development and infrastructure and public amenities coordinated at the same time as new housing so we've got a significant issue. We've got a land supply crisis and we've got to solve infrastructure and we've got to solve the fact that its in a very 1960s urban sprawl model and we're getting a lose-lose condition on the fringe so when we develop we put more and more people more and more single houses that need more and more transport because there is less and less employment and so we have a looped problem to solve.

What the government wants to do is implement a 15 year metropolitan development program so no longer the urban development program will be managed by Planning NSW. Its very important for a couple of reasons that is setting 5, 10 and 15 year requirements and linking those to infrastructure and getting Treasury to understand budget beyond the 3 year cycle. The program provides for more homes through a combination of land release and targeted urban consolidation, we want better quality design, equity of access, affordability and choice and significant investment as we know an infrastructure is required to meeting housing demand to sustain Sydney's competitors.

The government action plan is to forecast land from consolidation and greenfields, restructure the UDP and MUDP into a single metropolitan development program and that will have a 15 year schedule, 0-5, 5-10 as I described and 10-15 years. Significantly the government said that land on the NDP will not be rezoned unless infrastructure and funding mechanisms are put in place so the government is serious about wanting the transport there and its working very hard at the moment to find the framework in which to do that.

Excuses for the small map but it was the only way I could get it on all the one. We have in the south west significant sites we will bring on in the next 5 years the Bringelly site, that will be properly regionally structured, infrastructure will be provided to it and will be linked in to Liverpool, Campbelltown and so on. But in the meantime we're looking for the quick wins, the South Hoxton Parks, the Glenfields Roads and so on so we can get supply moving in the short term, and then moving to sites like Elderslie, Spring Farm, Elderslie is about ready to go, the Council has resolved not to rezone until there is a meaningful contribution from the State Government to transport and we're in heavy discussions with them about what that might mean, Spring Farm will come fairly rapidly and then Menangle Park. Edmonton Park is in advanced stage, the Council has put together a team with project managers to bring that forward and so the south west is then a mixture of immediate supply that we're trying to get on to the market, towards longer term, fully planned communities like Bringelly.

North west is more difficult to get immediate sites on. So we're concentrating on Balmoral Road and Second Ponds Creek and looking then at Marsden Park, the areas around Rouse Hill being Riverstone and so on to be planned together for infrastructure and transport in an orderly way in a little bit of the longer term time frame.

Now there are some real challenges in doing both those areas. We want to achieve more sustainable development, better design excellence and better quality places. And we have a problem. Here is just some newspaper clippings that I've collected the Australian is saying that we're doing so badly in trying to halt urban sprawl that we're reviving polluted and scarred landscape and we keep on making things worse by putting more stuff on the ground. We know that suburban dream is under pressure household structure is changing, this is the NRMA who heavens sake, the road lobbyist saying to sprawl or not to sprawl and saying there is enough. So we're really trying to rethink the urban development models and get away from roads to ruin.

One of the problems we've got is that the conventional development model and this is just out of the street directory for northern Perth, has been what I call when I'm in a polite mood, conventional suburban development and when I'm in an impolite mood I call suburban sprawl. Its the kind of stuff that I discovered at a community workshop in Albury-Wodonga when I reviewed the National Growth, I said to this woman tell me how do you get to your place from this community consultation and she said Evan you go out and drive down to the arterial and she didn't call it the arterial, the big road, and you turn left and you go down to the roundabout, turn left again and you go to the next roundabout and turn left, then you come up to the estate its on the left, its got a couple of rocks out the front then you turn in turn on your right but if you go around its not on your right its on your left because it's a looped road. I said hmmmm how do you get to here from Albury and she said you go to the Town Hall and turn right, go to the primary school and turn left, turn right to the highway at the video store, we don't have any of that stuff here do we. And they don't because we've been coding it and heirarching it out of the system and its not just planners and surveyors and engineers its been a whole understanding of how we've produced to build the environment in this form and we've done a lot of measurements of the structure of the city but the town centres the legible street network the variety of housing and work places are all missing out of this urban form so we need to change urban forms as well.

This shows just a couple of snapshots typical stuff coming off computer design systems before we intervened and you know the kind of nice wide roads and shopping centres we did where you'd need to be a retired SAS soldier to walk that distance, you'd have to get into your car and insanely drive round and plug up this collector road just to get to the front door of your local shop to buy a litre of milk and that's not where we need to be.

So we can do better, by integrating land use and transport and we've got SEP66 that we've refined and will be finalised quite soon to promote less traffic congestion, better public transport and mixed use communities based upon public transport as well as roads, we're absolutely not this is a car based economy but to get some more balance in the system. To get better design, better integrated planning processes across government and commitment of those principles by government agencies.

If we then look at corridors and planning of corridors together instead of individual sites I mean I've coined a whole new term since I've come to Sydney its not actually urban sprawl it's a bit of urban splatter because there is a site here and a site there and we're trying to link all these things up. We need a coherent planning framework at a district and regional scale in a partnership approach with local government, State government and the relevant agencies to achieve that.

One of the ways we achieved it in Western Australia was doing structure planning at a regional scale. This site is about 3 kilometres across here, its about 5 kilometres here, a substantial amount of urban development, couple of slides up I'll quickly go back to it, this is the sort of designs we were getting off the CAD systems from the urban designers in Perth and what we said is what happens if we design better urban structure and we leave the railway along the freeway and one of the issues there for us was that in fact this is national park we discovered that not many kangaroos catch the train, so one half of a billion dollar infrastructure was not going to be utilised properly, so we brought the train into the urban area, clustered towns in neighbourhoods and neighbourhoods around that interconnected those neighbourhoods provided employment areas both there and along the coast put in universities and schools in order to get this to be a much more traditional form in order to get the sort of mixed use the transport land use integration and its that sort of approach we're going to work on for the north west and south west growth corridors of Sydney. The kind of urban design that then went on the ground and developers needed to work this through this is the West Australian example its called Hilarys at Harbour Rise. Interconnected network of streets, this is the most popular tourist attraction in Perth by a country mile and it relates to that and you can see even our success in the road engineers having built four lanes for no particular purpose squeezing it down into here and getting land uses to front there, some very good locations for business, and also getting a new flavour and design of housing so we're not just putting up boxes with no content and that box sits on a lovely park, the tennis courts and facilities as you can see in the middle so they get community, they get economic benefit and they get linkages into the wider urban system.

Master planned communities in NSW this is Stanhope Gardens are heading the same way with a series of community facilities and interconnected network of streets and trying to get more of those mixed uses through.

Finally then bringing those kind of design ideas together we're trying to move from conventional development into a more traditional urbanism at project level. Now they're very nice to have interconnected streets and better neighbourhoods and so on but unless we can get a better urban a better transport and employment context, which has to be delivered at a regional scale, we won't get anywhere near close to sustainable growth management.

So, in summary then, we have major population growth occurring in Sydney and likely to occur for the foreseeable future. The urban fringe will continue to provide a very important role in housing Sydneys growth, the government has recognised that and said that we need transport and better urban design to deliver our outcomes there. In order to deliver those outcomes we are looking to form and are forming partnerships with local government, with other State agencies to plan and design at a regional level to make sure that we get the jobs the urban transport and the community facilities that those communities deserve so that we're not just poking urban sprawl on the fringe and expecting them to do long commutes to survive, we can do a lot better, we've certainly got the skill base in NSW and that's our firm intention to deliver that. Thank you.

APPLAUSE

Case Studies - Warringah Council's new LEP under Plan First - how the new system is working

David Kerr, Manager Strategic Land Use Planning, Warringah Council

CASE STUDIES WARRINGAH COUNCIL
DAVID KERR

MICHAEL PARKINSON

Our next speaker is David Kerr, David is the Manager of Strategic Land Use Planning at Warringah Council. David is a Town Planner by profession and also has a degree in Coastal Geography. He has mainly worked in local Government on the North Shore of Sydney. David has worked with both DA assessment and strategic planning. David will be speaking to us today on Warringah Council's LEP which is one of the first LEPs to be based upon the new Plan First framework that Dr Refshauge was talking about. Would everyone give David a very warm welcome please.

APPLAUSE

While David is firing up his power point presentation I'd like to mention today's presentations are being recorded, we'll have those typed up and probably in the next month or so we'll have those up on the Cumberland Group website, that's at www.cumberlandgroup.com.au.

During morning tea if everybody could go and have a look at Legalco's display area in Lobby A. They've been very supportive of the Cumberland Group both last year and this year and it helps make days like today the success they are and keeps the costs down for you.

DAVID KERR

Thank you everyone. I'd like to start my presentation today by explaining a bit of who I am, my name is David Kerr. I'm a town planner by profession, have worked at Northern Sydney councils for the bets part of 5-6 years and also have a degree in coastal geography so I am a little bit environmentally focussed.

I'll start the presentation by talking about where is Warringah. We're located on the northern beaches of Sydney between Queenscliff Beach and North Narrabeen out as far west as Frenchs Forest and to the Roseville Bridge. We have an area of 153 square kilometres of which about 59 square kilometres is national park. We have 135,000 people in 50,000 rateable properties and the Council considers about 2000 development applications per year. Most of those applications are for alterations, additions, pools, decks, some residential flat development and some new subdivisions.

We have a diverse range of land uses in the Warringah area from you've got non urban areas in Duffys Forest and Belrose, we have industrial, commercial, standard residential areas and also medium density up to a height of six storeys in the Dee Why town centre.

That's a map of the Warringah area showing the area that's covered and the Warringah theme is the bush and the beach and you can see by the small photograph there of North Narrabeen beach that it is a very beautiful area.

With regard to Plan First it is an initiative from the State Government designed to modernise the plan making the system in NSW now that quote is directly taken from the Plan First White Paper released back in 1997. The hierarchy under Plan First is local plan, regional strategy and State planning policies.

The new Warringah LEP is considered to be an example of what we call a Local Plan. There is a picture of the LEP and the accompanying maps, you will note if you can see that, that the map is devoid of the traditional colours associated with land use zoning.

Initially the development of the new LEP began in 1997 when Council adopted a place based planning approach to a new LEP. Our previous instrument was based on the 1985 Warringah LEP which incorporated the area now known as Pittwater Council, then following the secession in 1992 the Council decided it was time to produce a new planning instrument.

We had extensive community consultation and staff education was undertaken because the proposed model LEP differed greatly from any existing planning instruments in NSW. We set up a lot of community advisory committees which were set with all users of the plan including consultant planners, surveyors, architects, environmental representatives and representatives of local resident groups.

The original version was released in 1997 and was revised extensively prior to its gazettal on 5 December 2000 by both the Council and by Planning NSW and also as a result of the outcomes of our community advisory committees. What that meant was that the final working model that we are all working with now differs greatly from the Plan First model that was envisaged and I don't know if you know the name John Mant, but John Mant's model of place based planning and the approach to development was significantly varied by the time the LEP was eventually adopted.

So the question is how is Warringah LEP different? Well first of all there are no zones in Warringah, we no longer have the residential 2A or industrial 4A zones. Instead we have 73 different localities that all have different qualities and characteristics. The plan incorporates all relevant SEP's and REP's in its content and expressly exempts them from applying to Warringah. Now in terms of what that does for the Plan the provisions of for example SEP5 aged and disabled persons housing do not apply to Warringah, those provisions are within our plan.

Now that is the main thrust of the Plan First part of that model in that the documents are all contained within the Warringah LEP well that was the intention to do in the initial stages of the LEP. And the localities themselves are based on catchments, we have four major catchments in Warringah and the localities are broadly based on catchments and then divided again into appropriate land uses.

As another feature of the plan, there are minimal prohibitions on development. The real big prohibition are things that are prohibited by the State instruments that are incorporated into the plan. So how does the LEP operate? Well first the development is guided by 3 part test to which it must comply now this is the most important and the structural clause of the plan Clause 12. It sets out that the development ie a development application, to be approved must first of all have regard to a desired future character now each locality statement has a desired future character statement in it. Then the development must also pass the relevant general principles of development control. These are contained within the plan and in some cases for example residential development its not appropriate to apply a general principle about onsite loading and unloading, so you only apply those where relevant and thirdly there are built form controls in each of the 73 localities that guide the development in those.

Now the type of development in each of the 73 localities are listed in what we call categories. There are 3 categories. Category 1 development is development is presumed to be consistent with the desired future character so for example in a residential locality a detached house, an addition to a house, a pool, a front fence would be category 1 development. Category 2 development is development that may be consistent with that area but has to show that it is appropriate in a location by complying with the desired future character statement and category 3 development is presumed to be inconsistent with the desired future character. It is still permissible development and is akin in some ways to previous examples of rezonings. So an example of a category 3 development may be a house being used as an office premises in a residential locality. Now the additional hoop for category 3 is that the development must pass through an independent public hearing panel where that panel meets and considers the application independent of the Council officers and the assessment staff and the Council. The desired future character sets the type and form of development, in its siting, in the pattern and scale and the way it relates to special natural features.

For example the Middle Harbour suburbs locality which is our largest residential locality contains the suburbs of Frenchs Forest, Forestville, Killarney Heights, says Middle Harbour will remain characterised by detached style housing in landscaped settings. Now they're important words in those desired future character statements because the definition of something like housing for example covers all types of housing in Warringah. It does not make distinction between a single house and a block of units for example so the distinction of detached style housing effectively creates a de facto prohibition in the ability to have medium density housing in areas where we don't necessarily want it to occur.

The general principles of development control. There are 46 of them in all which set objectives and performance standards including bulk and scale car parking, access to sunlight, private open space, development on sloping land, all those things which should form part of an assessment of any application but in the Warringah plan its very clear that all these items must be considered.

The built form controls are specific for each locality and differ in terms of what the desired future character is trying to achieve. So we control things such as the density, height, front and rear setbacks, building envelopes, landscaped area and locality specific issues such as beach front set backs or set backs to our coastal lagoons.

You'll find the standards for subdivision are there is no minimum lot size requirements in the Warringah LEP 2000, what the lot size is controlled by is the density control within the locality statements.

The benefits of LEP 2000 for an assessment officer. There is a strong focus on the place and desired future character so its not just a blanket zoning of a residential area that's you know residential areas in Frenchs Forest are completely different to residential areas in Narrabeen so it does focus upon the place.

All controls are contained within the statutory instrument. Again that is the working model and the direction of Plan First. Only minimal documents need to be referenced in the DA assessment. Now the initial as I touched on before, the initial idea with the Warringah LEP 2000 was that all the documents were included in the plan. Unfortunately some of the documents had to be referenced and you still need to look at some other additional documents when you are considering an application so its not a pure Plan First model but it is the closest that anyone has got at the moment.

There is a flexibility to recommend approval of good development. Now when I say that I'm talking about category 3 development that may be appropriate in certain areas. Since the plan has been gazetted we've had 9 applications for category 3 development which all would have been previously spot rezoning type applications and of those 9 I think 6 have been approved because they have demonstrated that there is an appropriate need for that development in that area.

The benefits also the criteria within the Plan are performance based. The general principles in particular all have performance based standards as well as the numerical standards in them but if you look at the objective of the underlying standard is what's important not necessarily the standard itself.

Additional statutory reinforcement of build form controls. Previously Warringah's LEP 1985 had controls for the erection of a dwelling were confined to a 6.5 metre front setback and an 11 metre height control to the ceiling. Now they were both contained in policy documents of Council not within the statutory instrument and were subject to significant variation over time. We now have development standards in our LEP relating to height relating to front setbacks relating to building envelopes, landscaped area that all have more statutory weight than they would in a development control plan.

The other benefit is that an applicant can come into the counter at Warringah or surf the net and the Warringah LEP is on line at our web site and be aware of all the requirements for submitting a development application up front.

For applicants or consultants or mum and dad developers out there using the plan, the document is a 'one stop' shop as I touched on before and also provides the ability to have the development considered on merit under the provisions of category 3 rather than flatly prohibiting a development that may be appropriate and having to go through the process of spot rezoning. It also negates the need for many of those rezoning type applications and I'm sure if anyone out there who has put in a rezoning fee in Warringah knows that the fee to initially consider it is $5,000. You much prefer to pay about a $500 DA fee to get the same outcome.

It also gives applicants a clear indication of the expectations with regard to lodgment of any application. The plan provides for 2 schedules attached to the plan, which are Site Analysis and Statement of Environmental Effects. Now each application that is submitted no matter how small must be accompanied by a Statement of Environmental Effects and a Site Analysis and encourage innovate design through the use of performance based standards and controls. If you put on just numbers in policies you get boxes. What we're trying to do in Warringah is encourage the use of innovative design and work with applicants rather than work against them by saying sorry you don't comply with the standard. We try and give them an opportunity to reason out why non compliance is justified.

Some difficulties experienced in the gazettal of the LEP 2000. Any new State policies that are released now Evan talked about SEP66 we've also got SEP65 design of residential development and also recently we've got SEP70. Those new State policies automatically apply to Warringah and in order for us to have exemption from them we have to amend our LEP. Some items such as the Australian Standards for car parking and disabled access are two of the major ones and the Building Code of Australia need to be read in conjunction with the LEP because reference is made in the Environmental Planning & Assessment Act to a development having to comply with both of those standards and therefore it forms a matter for consideration.

The difficulties continued; it's a new direction. We experience many initial problems with turning thought towards locality based systems rather than blanket zoning. That is starting to die down now but we still have people who haven't worked in Warringah for a couple of years lodging an application and being handed a locality statement over the counter and basically not knowing what it means and what to do with it. Now as a result of that we have dedicated 5 staff that run a front counter at Warringah available during business hours. We have provided the Warringah Design Guidelines which are guidelines for applicants in how to interpret all the controls and all the general principles and we also provide practice notes and guidelines for the most common types of applications such as alterations and additions, how to draw the building envelope, how to work out the front setback and things like that.

There are many cases where the performance criteria have been pushed to the limit though interpretation. We've had a number of issues where applicants have seen what they consider to be a hole in the plan which would allow certain types of development that may not be what the plan initially envisages and they've pushed those through. Many of the controls have already been tested by the Land & Environment Court, Warringah has at any time about 40-50 appeals to the Court and with changes recommended as an outcome of some of those cases.

Currently we're in a period where we are about to review the Warringah LEP and the purpose for this review is that the plan was given a 2 year life span when gazetted by Planning NSW. Again imposed due to the nature of the plan and a new direction and I think potentially Warringah was a bit of a guinea pig in terms of whether Plan First would work.

Council has engaged an independent person to review the operation of the Plan to determine whether it is satisfactory. Now that operation and that independent person is looking at the structure of the Plan, he is not looking at any development standards or controls within the Plan, he is purely looking at whether locality based planning is better than the old residential zoning based planning. This is a requirement that was put in with the gazettal of the Plan.

The Plan is also being reviewed in response to a resolution of Council to look at the development controls and standards within the Plan. The hottest issue in Warringah at the moment is urban consolidation and as Evan talked about transport, traffic and looking at how we can provide for the additional population. The Council made a resolution that the Plan needs to be reviewed on the basis of that potentially Warringah was being over developed and we are looking at those standards now as a separate process to our independent review. This review is now being undertaken by my team of 5 staff and is about 75% complete, we're looking at having something to Planning NSW later this year. The results of the independent review, our consultant will make those available in August of this year and again we have until 5 December this year to make an amendment to the Plan because it only has a 2 year life span.

This are our wish list it is hoped that the independent report recommends that the Plan be continued in operation.

The Warringah LEP 2000 is far superior to the previous LEP 85; which is a testament to have a look at some buildings constructed under the previous LEP and if Warringah LEP 2000 expires on 5 December then LEP 85 comes back into force which is not a desirable alternative.

The procedure for amending the Plan is identical to any other LEP part 3 of the EP&A Act I won't need to go into that and the Warringah Plan has been amended 5 times since its gazettal, generally as a result of anomalies and things that have come out of Court cases. The current review will result in additional two amendments to the Plan.

The future of Plan First, recent advice from Planning NSW, Plan First to be implemented in a revised form. New levy from stamp duty to fund its implementation and the EP&A Act is not proposed to be amended at this point in time now that's a significant variation to what the original Plan First model proposed.

Where to from here? Future plans to include more environmental controls within the LEP. Council has just recently adopted an environmental strategy looking at water sensitive urban design, design of new subdivisions to include water quality control and a lot stricter requirements there.

Our procedure for amendment needs to be developed when new SEP's and REP's are released that apply to Warringah and we would also like to continue our close working relationship with Planning NSW and that (next slide) is an example of development in Dee Why under the new LEP that's a 3-4 storey mixed commercial residential development overlooking Dee Why beach completed just after the gazettal of the Plan.

Thank you.

APPLAUSE

Question: John Tierney

I address my question to Evan Jones: Even I recall a year or so ago when our Premier Bob Car was expressing concern at the population increase in Sydney already and how our infrastructures seem to be bursting at the seams. The strategy which you are putting forward, and as a surveyor I am very pleased to see actually because it is great for business. It seems to be contradictory to what the Government I thought, was talking about. What my question was and it sounds very naïve - if you were to swell up the release of Greenfields and Brownfields and to slow up urban consolidation, would this not push some of the population increase into some of the regional areas such as Central Coast, Woollongong, maybe Bathurst, Orange which was part of the intention 30 years ago, what impact does it have, what actually would happen here in Sydney if that were to take place? Second question I would ask is that is there any account or is it taken into account, the impact that the strategy will have on invested development in terms of rental apartments and buildings. There seems to be anecdotal evidence at the moment that the rental market is quite soft and I presume that’s because of the home owners grant. So do you take that into account in terms of a population shift?

Response: Evan Jones

None of this is easy. The first one is, there is a whole range of commentators, including the Premier, who are quite worried about growth of Sydney. The Premier I think moreover was reacting to, over the last year, to some fairly provocative comments coming out of groups like the Urban Development Industry in Melbourne who are arguing for doubling of population of Australia to 50 million. And when we ran some numbers we realised in the time frame they wanted would be doubling the growth of Sydney where it is, putting another Sydney where Newcastle is, another one where Wollongong is and for good measure another one in the Southern Highlands. So clearly that was arrant nonsense to push the population to that sort of limit.

The decentralisation question - what happens if we put up the barriers in Sydney - well let me tell you what happened in some other cities that I know. When I lived in the UK and studied in Oxford, they put a growth ring around Oxford and all that happened was that all the little villages around Oxford grew immensely and there was massive travel between the two. When I lived in Amsterdam there was limited growth there. What happened there was that Amsterdam became a conglomeration with Rotterdam and the whole thing glued itself together that way. If we limit growth in Sydney we will then escalate house prices astronomically, and we will push the people who can least afford to do it into the furthest away places and that is not where we need to be. The final point on that one is that I reviewed Albury Wodonga National Growth Centre and let me give you the headline comment for that. Of $1,000,000,000 [One thousand million dollars] of investment. You know how land development is meant to go up; as a good proposition, it actually was worth $500,000,000 [Five hundred million dollars] so it is an awfully expensive proposition to think that we can just fund the relocation of people. This is I think, in my opinion, a sensible intervention at this point which balances the growth that we can see for the next 5 or 10 years. There’s another and larger conversation as you point out to have beyond that period about what are the limits of Sydney growth and what do we do at those points. So for my money, a good balancing act at this stage but some big policy questions to ask for the future in that respect. In relation to the question about the rental market going soft, the developers we talked to say that there is a huge pent-up demand for owner-occupier purchase. And in fact what’s happening is that people are going to display villages for houses and actually not asking about the houses, they are asking them whether any land is available and they will buy a house if they can find them some land. So it seems that the market, whilst going soft in the rental sector, is still very strong in the purchaser area. And the numbers that are coming through suggest to us that we do need to respond to that.

MICHAEL PARKINSON

Do we have any more questions? We will have to cut the question time a bit short, we are running slightly over. Martin Burke?

Question: Martin Burke:

What is Planning NSW doing in relation to the most important issue of release of land for development, that is, the availability of water, sewerage and stormwater services, particularly in relation to the funding arrangements with Sydney Water?

Response: Evan Jones

Sydney Water are represented on the Urban Management Committee of Cabinet through their Minister and the CEO turns up. We have them on the Metro CEOs Group and we deal with them week to week now in terms of the planning that we are doing. We know that there are very significant issues. For example, in the Rouse Hill area they have got a huge lumpy piece of infrastructure that they have been struggling with, of a new water reservoir, and the Board there needs to be convinced about that investment. And what we are trying to do is link certainty, that the amount of development they need to justify that will be brought forward in an orderly manner to justify that one huge lumpy piece of investment. But there are still some challenges. We haven't yet, to be straight, got to the bottom of what all the infrastructure issues are but again the only way I can describe it is that we are trying to work towards a partnership so we can understand their problems and work them through the system as we get this Land Release Program organised.

Michael Parkinson:

Thank you we will have to finish off the questions there. We have a few gifts for our speakers and I would like everyone to thank our speakers again who have taken time out of their very busy schedules.

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