Earlier this year I participated in a planning industry workshop initiated by our local Mayor in what seemed like a genuine effort to improve the delivery of planning services to our community.
At the epicentre of this is the Development Approval (DA) Submission process which quite justifiably has a reputation for being the bermuda triangle of development - a wasteful and unreliable process, in many ways a lucky dip with the only certainty being a lack of certainty in what may happen once a DA is lodged.
The impact of this system included planning and development costs and risks which were preventing people from improving their living situation and in some cases substandard development outcomes for the community
Some Key issues that were identified included customer service issues but also some structural issues in the way the process worked including a Lack of Objectivity and Reliability in council processes including Request for information (RFI) and Heritage Assessment - described by some in the forum as a Heritage Lottery
Council predictably responded with some of the usual recommendations and buried these in a council minute at an unknown council meeting - what comes of this we time will tell.
So Mel from Sky Planning and I teamed up to take matters into our own hands and set out to explore more radical approaches to planning law on the Buildipedia podcast.
I started by doing some “research” ie: asking Chatgpt to put forward some crazy ideas for how to change the planning system.
Chatgpt got into the spirit of things “Alright, let's go full-on wild” it says at one point After it put forward some great suggestions like; “Dungeons and Developers, a Giant Roulette Wheel and Planning Approval via Obstacle Course” - I suggested that actually - it seems like these ideas was very much our experience with dealing with our local council. Chatgpt responded with “What was meant to be an exercise in absurdity might actually be a reflection of one of the most unique planning departments in the world!” - and I thought “holy crap! It knows our local council!”
Here are the radical suggestions Mel and I came up with:
Tinder for planning consultation - allow the community to swipe left or right for ideas
Visual representation of council conditions in 3D including contentions
Empower the local community - crazy right? Give them more than just the opportunity to object, involve community representatives in the process.
Deemed approval rather than refusal - if council fails to act then rather than deemed refusal - which can then trigger further action by the applicant in court provide deemed approval instead
Use crowdsourcing. Crowdsourcing is the practice of obtaining information or ideas from a large group of people. This could be used to get feedback on planning proposals and to identify potential solutions to problems.
Abolish zoning. Zoning is the practice of dividing land into different areas with different uses, such as residential, commercial, and industrial. Abolishing zoning would allow for more flexibility in land use, and would make it easier to develop mixed-use projects.
Cut the council’s budget, give it limited resources to deal with each matter.
Flatten the council organisation, Empower planners and remove multiple layers of management
Transparency on council spending on solicitors and council costs of approval and or court challenges
Costs awarded in Land Environment Court (LEC) - currently LEC is unlikely to award costs but for
Third party anonymous survey on customer service – leader boards for individual assessing officers, boom!
Issuing of ‘draft’ consent and conditions prior to formally determined – (Mel that’s so insanely crazy!!) especially when even if the council officer makes a mistake, it’s up to the applicant to lodge 4.551a.
Introduce a business liaison officer (Liverpool City Council has introduced recently). Kind of sad that this is even needed, if the assessing officers just did their job properly in the first place
face-to-face meetings for request for information from councils (RFIs) and in general
An ability to negotiate on planning non compliances without having to go put an application into Land and Environment Court.
Impose penalties – i.e. seeing as there is no accountability / KPIs for council to assess DAs and no penalties if they take months and months or even years…. What about we impose a penalty for councils with a benefit to developers, i.e. if a DA is undetermined within 60 days the developer is given a bonus amount of sqm of FSR per month for every month it goes unapproved!!!!
Some quite radical uplifts offered for those developers that build with high sustainability design then we get density, in the right areas, in the right way AND it's feasible / stacks up for developers
Allow business to operate WHILE they are they are getting their approvals – currently its the compliant businesses that suffer while those that flaunt the law get away with it.
build a culture of YES! - the recent email from the minister Paul Scully to all mayors – more of this!!! Shouldn’t have taken a housing crisis to form this culture though
We’d love you to share your radical ideas, please comment down below!
Link to podcast: https://www.buildipedia.au/podcast/episode/317e7aa1/22-radical-ideas-for-the-future-of-council-planning-with-melissa-neighbour
More crazy ideas from Chatgpt.