Page 1259 - Week 04 - Thursday, 7 April 2016
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Presently, the act treats each of the planning processes as an individual process that is dealt with in isolation from other planning processes. However, the processes are often related, even though currently they are dealt with in an entirely linear manner. The act also requires similar administrative steps for each of the planning processes. For example, public notification is one of the administrative requirements for each of the processes. At present public notification of each process occurs separately, even though they may all relate to the same end development proposal.
Bringing together common administrative processes provides an opportunity to reduce red tape and to improve efficiency. There are other benefits apart from just administrative efficiency. Bringing together the notification requirements of a number of processes as a single notification will give the community a holistic package of planning information to consider and comment on. There is also potential for the proponent of a proposal to reduce costs which can be passed on to the end consumer.
From an assessment perspective, the capacity to have all of the planning information about the proposal at the same time will mean assessment officers can also consider the development application in a holistic manner. For example, the planning and land authority could consider as a package a proposed variation to the territory plan, information on the environmental impacts of the proposal and the actual proposed development.
This approach could have been useful in the recent territory plan variation around the Red Hill shops, for example. Residents have raised concerns about something that may or may not occur in the future, and some of those concerns may have been unfounded. If a development application were to have been available for public comment at the same time as the territory plan variation, there would have been much more clarity about the specifics of the development proposal.
Another challenge in the act is the inability of the planning and land authority to accept a development application if the proposal is prohibited. It has become evident that this inability is resulting in the authority not being able to accept applications that may have real merit and result in good planning outcomes. The bill rectifies this situation by allowing the authority to accept applications that include prohibited development in limited circumstances. The general prohibition on prohibited development remains unchanged, and, importantly, the bill does not allow prohibited development to be approved.
The bill seeks to make amendments to improve the efficiency of three key planning processes: territory plan variations, both technical and full; environmental assessment; and development application assessment. The proposed amendments provide an opportunity for a proponent to choose to bring together these independent planning processes in one streamlined, concurrent process. Presently, the authority cannot accept a development application for prohibited development; or if the development requires an EIS it must be a completed environmental impact statement. This means that the DA must wait for a considerable period until the territory plan is varied or the EIS is completed.
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