Development control needs root and branch rethink

The ink is barely dry on the Minister's approval of the Development Control Plan (DCP), and the Local Planning Panel is already calling for a review of its provisions ("Panel recommends strategic planning review", PN559).

For those of us who have been saying from the start that the DCP is arbitrary, inconsistent and inappropriate, it is gratifying to have an official body agreeing in that judgement.

But it is depressing that years have been spent on this futile exercise, and we have nothing more fit for purpose than this hodgepodge of ill-informed prejudice and ineffective restrictions.

There was never any attempt to make a proper review of the old DCP: the new one was just cobbled up out of the bits and pieces of the old Gosford and Wyong documents which were acknowledged by everybody to be useless and which were consistently breached by the Council itself in approving non-conforming developments.

It is not surprising that the brand-new DCP has made absolutely no difference to the number of applications for non-conforming developments.

This is because there is no logical basis for any of the DCP standards, so any developer is entitled to put forward his own suggestions as to what is appropriate.

It is also not surprising that many ratepayers are unhappy with developments that do meet the DCP standards.

This is because the DCP standards have no relationship to reality and do not contribute to producing the end-product that ratepayers want to see.

The window-dressing of "community consultation" was never more than a smokescreen to conceal the fact that the Administrator never intended to take notice of any opinion but his own in approving the DCP, so it could only be expected that most people are going to be dissatisfied with the results.

It is easy to predict that there will be some grudging response to the Panel's recommendation, mainly focussed on demonstrating that all the provisions were right to start with and that only a disgruntled minority could possibly find fault with them.

Then, as a gesture, some small adjustments will be made to a few trivial measures (probably, to make things a bit easier for developers), and the whole rigmarole of Ministerial approval will be repeated.

This, of course, will achieve nothing, because only a root and branch rethinking of the whole DCP mess can serve the purpose.

Land-use zoning is a blunt instrument at the best of times but, when it is as badly conceived as the present DCP is, we can expect nothing good from it - and we shall not be disappointed.

SOURCE:

Email, 24 Dec 2022

Bruce Hyland, Woy Woy