On the 13/10/2005 the Planning Minister Rob Hulls has announced review of “pissant permits” (see The Age article). Or did he? At the SOS Planning Forum on the 13/11/2005 we asked to become involved in the Process – after phone calls and emails requesting to be involved where ignored.
At the Forum the Minister stated that it was a bit rough to complain as he had only announced it a day before! Given the Age article had all the details correct, and had directly quoted him, a MONTH before, you do have to wonder.
What is this “streamlining” about and why is it being addressed?
Theoretically, it is about removing the requirement to get a permit for ‘small’ things and ‘unclogging’ your local council.
However, in practice, getting permits for small things isn’t a big overhead, and they aren’t the reason your local council is clogged.
The real reason that councils are buckling under the weight of development applications is the out-of-date nature of the planning system and the need for the Department to constantly update and “improve” it. That has led to increasingly complex guidelines, more steps that can be appealed to VCAT, and more and more need for the exercise of discretion.
In other words, it’s just getting more and more uncertain and more time consuming, which all parties are increasingly complaining about, including developers!
But rather than effectively addressing these issues by improving certainty and making the system more prescriptive and faster (ie, without so much discretion for each individual case), , the Minister wants a simplistic solution like just removing the need for “small project” permits. But planning permits are the only way to include key amenity issues like neighbourhood character requirements that are so important to our quality of life but which the bureaucrats find hard to quantify.
This review is also consider issues such as how planning permits are advertised.This does need review, but in the opposite direction to what is being considered hear ie they should be far more stringent!