Developers must respect democratic rights of communities
28 March 2006
The President of the Australian Local Government Association, Cr Paul Bell, today called on property developers to respect the democratic right of all Australians to control - through local government - the shape and scale of development within their own communities.
"Unfortunately, some sections of the development industry appear hell bent on removing the right of democratically elected community representatives to make decisions on development applications," Cr Bell said.
"Developers should pay heed to the results of an independent survey released yesterday by the NSW Local Government and Shires Associations, which show that 72% of respondents from across NSW felt councils are the most appropriate sphere of government to determine development applications.
"The opinion poll was conducted by Iris Research on 22 and 23 March and included a representative sample of 640 households in metropolitan, regional and rural NSW. It found:
- 72% of those polled felt local government was the most appropriate level of government to determine building and development applications.
- 65% wanted councils, not panels, to be responsible for approving development applications.
"This survey backs a survey commissioned by the Local Government Association of Queensland last year.
"That survey, by Market Facts, put a specific question to the 600 randomly-selected participants in the sample survey on whether they agreed with the development industry wanting elected council members removed from specific development applications. Only 29% of respondents agreed.
"Put another way, by a margin of 61%, those surveyed put their faith in elected members over developers," he said.
"Surveys have shown that most development applications are determined by council planning officers and only very few - around 1.5% to 4% - are considered at council meetings.
"And a recent survey released by the LGAQ found that developers themselves are often the cause of delays in processing development applications.
"Local government is putting a lot of time and effort into streamlining the development application process, with much work underway on online lodgment systems.
"While struggling with an acute shortage of planners and increasingly complex state and federal legislative requirements which hamper the planning process, we are making significant headway.
"A recent LGAQ study found that, when developer delays were taken into account, the average time to process a DA was just 5.2 weeks. In other words, there is no planning crisis.
"As Victorian Planning Minister, Rob Hulls said yesterday, … taking local government out of the planning equation and removing growth boundaries to create urban sprawl are unnecessary, unrealistic and unacceptable … ," Cr Bell said.
- Contact
- Cr Paul Bell AM, ALGA President - 0418 791 596
- Rohan Greenland, ALGA Public Affairs - 0412 85 9434 / 02 6122 9434
