Today the Victorian Auditor General tabled in Parliament his report on Victoria’s Planning Framework for Land Use and Development. Unlike most other State Governments reports, this one is NOT a white wash saying that everything is fine! Some highly critical key findings were that – "In 78% of [permit application] cases examined, officer reports did not give adequate consideration to matters specified in the Act, planning scheme or both."
"Some elements of the new format planning schemes have become overly complex, are unclear and are not adequately achieving their original intent as established under the VPP…and need to be addressed." "Performance measurement arrangements have not been developed to assess the impact of changes to the legislative and regulatory framework designed to improve the effectiveness and efficiency of statutory processes. Consequently, it is unclear whether these changes have achieved their intended goals" Existing arrangements within DPCD do not allow for comprehensive measurement and monitoring of the overall performance of the planning system. In the A-G report, key difficulties cited by Councils themselves in their management of planning included: – strong development growth has increased the work pressure on already-stretched resources so some planning staff don’t have the time or capacity to effectively address all statutory requirements – Councils employ a high proportion of inexperienced planners because it is hard to attract and retain qualified planners – the complexity of existing planning processes (including the Victoria Planning Provisions) and the lack of prescription contribute to uncertainty in decision-making – management of contentious cases which generate a lot of community interest can have significant resource implications and an adverse impact on processing time This latter point is just democracy in action – if development proposals were more respectful of neighbourhoods and the community, such opposition with it’s inevitable delays would be far less. A more detailed response from SOS to this paper will be posted soon.