Page 4549 - Week 11 - Tuesday, 18 October 2011
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the Planning and Development Act. This new system provides an efficient, fair and consistent planning and development system fundamental to the economic wellbeing of the territory. The restructured territory plan has provided greater certainty regarding processes for development assessment and significantly reduced time frames.
At the time that the restructured territory plan was introduced, the government gave a commitment that the policy content would be reviewed and updated as a result of changing economic, social and environmental circumstances to create a best practice and responsive development assessment framework. Variation 302, which reviewed the community facility zone objectives, development table and development code, is the first stage of the review that will be followed by draft variation 306 that proposes an amended estate development code, residential codes and a new lease variation general code.
Other codes within the territory plan will also be reviewed, including the commercial and industrial zones code. A research paper on Canberra’s night-time economies was released in April 2011 and a discussion paper on the commercial zones policies, which poses questions regarding possible directions, was released in May 2011 and will contribute to the review of the commercial zones code.
Variation 302 to the territory plan proposes to introduce new objectives for the community facility zone that include social inclusion, social sustainability and community formation principles. Changes are proposed to the community facility zone development table, including prohibiting a funeral parlour and certain types of residential development on sites identified in precinct codes, thereby reserving the land for community uses. The variation review will make changes to the community facility zone development code. These changes include new building height provisions and clarification that residential uses cannot be unit-titled or separately subdivided in the zone. The draft variation is consistent with the territory plan’s statement of strategic directions in terms of environmental, economic and social sustainability principles.
Draft variation 302 was released for public comment in May 2010 and attracted eight public submissions. The main issues raised in the public comments related primarily to the proposal to reserve key community facility zone land parcels for community use by prohibiting certain forms of residential development, proposed building height limits, revised zone objectives and the role of open plans. A report on consultation was prepared by the ACT Planning and Land Authority, responding to the issues raised in the submissions. A copy of that report is included with the documents I have tabled.
Under section 73(2) of the Planning and Development Act, the former Minister for Planning referred proposed draft variation 302 to the Standing Committee on Planning, Public Works and Territory and Municipal Services for its consideration. The government has agreed with the six recommendations made by the standing committee in its report No 11, released in July 2011. Accordingly, I have directed the Planning and Land Authority to consider revising the draft variation in line with the recommendations of the committee. In particular, I have put emphasis on clarifying
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