Along with the Planning Act Review and other recent changes to the planning regime (allegedly in the short-term economic interest), the draft changes to the state planning rules will weaken urban planning controls. This is despite the fact that current crises like peak oil and climate change demand MORE prescriptive regulation, not less, to actively focus development and new infrastructure on creating a more functional, sustainable city.

On 2nd February 2010, SOS lodged a critical submission with the Department of Planning on the Review of the State Planning Policy Framework.

To download the submission, click on the attachment below:

What’s missing is any future vision for the sustainable development of Melbourne. And in the words of the Municipal Association of Victoria, “the draft fails to acknowledge and strengthen local government’s roles in planning, creates risk and uncertainty for local government…”

SOS submission concludes that:-

The philosophical approach to this Draft has clearly been to “streamline” (deregulate) planning processes under the Act.

The timing of the review of the Act is unfortunate, coinciding as it does with the impact of severe bushfire and an economic recession. These appear to have influenced the focus of the review, while other more serious long-term crises such as climate change and peak oil have had less obvious influence. However, the new Act must be based on a sound ESD footing to be able to tackle the environmental challenges of the next few decades.

In a democracy (as opposed to an enlightened dictatorship) any area that is
underperforming needs tighter, more specific or more appropriate legislation, not a more hands-off approach. This has already been evident from the failure of the Melbourne 2030 policy to achieve its aim of focusing most new medium and higher density housing into activity centres, protecting most of the suburban hinterland and obviating the need for further suburban sprawl.

Industry and commerce will not produce the necessary vision and drive in the public interest when society is facing the need for urgent changes in land use patterns in order to respond to major challenges like climate change, peak oil, lack of affordable housing and inadequate well-integrated public transport.

In general, the Draft fails to identify or address any future sustainable vision for the state, yet proposes to undemocratically streamline or deregulate key authorization and approval processes. It also fails to address most of the existing loopholes and weaknesses in the Act, many of which we highlighted in our initial submission.

Click on the attachment to read the entire submission

These three submissions are on the SOS Policies and Submissions page. The detailed SOS submission to the current review of VCAT deals with the reform of existing operations at the Planning List of VCAT, as well as recommendations for more major changes to the way the Tribunal functions to improve planning outcomes in Victoria. Our final April 09 submission to the consultation over the New Residential Zones suggested an alternative approach and took issue with the whole concept of new zones that would remove most fine-tuned planning control provided by local policies, and which would also still remove residents’ appeal rights in some cases. Pressure from possible residents appeals is the most effective way of trying to keep the planning application process as transparent and honest as possible. The comprehensive SOS submission to the current review of the Planning and Environment Act was prepared with professional legal input and reveals many of the improvements needed to make the Act more democratic and responsive to current planning needs. The SOS submission to the Planning Act Review can also be accessed from the DSE website (number 127): http://dsedocs.obsidian.com.au/planning/Planning_and_Environment_Act_Review_-_Submissions_2009/ Many other community organisations (including Planning Backlash – no.63) have also made critical submissions. Ian Wood SOS President

When Premier Brumby announced two months ago that several thousand development applications would be reviewed to remove "roadblocks" (like council planning schemes and VCAT hearings!), the reason was supposed to be for more construction jobs to provide much-needed housing. Of course we need jobs and more certainty and more housing, but there are better ways to do that than by removing democratic oversight and legitimate planning controls. This just hands windfall profits to developers to create projects that may not integrate properly with local infrastructure and planning policies (including environmentally-sustainable design to improve water and energy conservation). The democratic, transparent way to tackle the problem is to reduce the exercise of discretion, where planners have to check applications against a range of confusing state and local policies to try and make a balanced decision because nothing is mandatory. If basic zone and Rescode amenity standards were mandatory and gave due weight to local policy (at both council and VCAT), that would provide the certainty that all parties want by greatly simplifying the workload of council planners, speeding up ALL development assessments and all parties would have much greater certainty to plan ahead. Even compliant applications would be assessed much more quickly, and non-compliant ones would just be refused. There’d be no point in a developer appealing such a case to VCAT because approval would depend on amended plans that made it compliant, so there’d be nothing to gain by developers attempting to get "softer" decisions at VCAT, as occurs now. This would also guarantee that all projects would at least meet existing planning controls, improving planning outcomes while still ensuring that councils and the community had a voice and slashing appeals to VCAT in the process. Most projects are "held up" by council assessments and VCAT hearings simply because they are non-compliant ambit claims. These sorts of developments are invariably appealed to VCAT where amended plans to reduce their worst excesses are lodged to increase the chances of winning a permit. SOS doesn’t have a problem with legitimate fast-tracking of planning permits – as long as that means bumping important projects ahead in the planning assessment queue rather than not bothering about whether they meet all relevant policies or not. Ian Wood SOS President

As well as the recent call-ins of “strategic” sites by the Minister, in February the government unilaterally adopted Amendment VC53 to all Victorian planning schemes, which amends Clause 62.02-1 to include a planning permit exemption for ANY council building works costing less than $1 million.

The amendment was snuck in with no consultation at all under cover of the bushfire recovery amendments. It was adopted by the Minister on Feb.18 and gazetted on Feb.23, just 16 days after the tragic inferno of Feb.7. [http-//www.dse.vic.gov.au/planningschemes/aavpp/62.pdf]

That means your council can ignore all the neighbourhood character, environmental and design guidelines in its own planning scheme and build anything it likes wherever it likes, as long as it complies with building regulations and the works cost less than $1 million! All in the name of “economic recovery”.

Then there’s the desalination plant where, as with Kennett’s CityLink, tenders were being let before the EES process had even finished (not that this was any threat to the project because the EES terms of reference were carefully limited to how the plant should operate, not whether it should be built or not).

Now we find that in a somewhat Stalinesque move, all reference to the Melbourne 2030 Implementation Reference Group was quietly removed from the DPCD website several months ago. The IRG was unilaterally abolished by the current planning Minister early last year after it produced a number of reports critical of the way the government was handling the implementation of M2030. The IRG was the only formal representative body the government had for feedback from a range of stakeholders on the progress of Melbourne 2030, and the only official body with community representation (SOS had two seats on the committee).

However, the IRG reports and minutes will shortly be archived on the SOS website as a community service.

Read the government press release.

From that press release –

“A two page planning property report can now be generated free of charge by simply going to the Department of Sustainability and Environment’s website at www.dse.vic.gov.au/planning and clicking on “Planning Property Report”.