Speak and Listen - What the expert planning panel heard
Posted on December 02, 2013
In February 2013 the Minister for Planning, Mr John Rau announced the creation of a five member expert panel to undertake a review of the planning system and to provide recommendations for a new planning system. While the panel will not undertake a review of policy, it will look at potential reforms to the legislative framework for the planning system. To achieve this, the panel have identified five key themes to facilitate discussion:
- Partnerships and participation;
- Integration and alignment;
- Design and place;
- Renewal and resilience; and
- Performance and professionalism.
In its first phase, ‘establishing partnerships’ two reference groups (the Planning Reform Reference Group and the Agency Reference Group) were established by the panel. The reference groups comprised professional, community and industry representatives and assisted the panel with the engagement program for the second ‘listening and scoping’ phase of its work.
During the ‘listening and scoping’ phase the panel held 75 workshops, roundtables and briefings and spoke with over 1,200 people to gain an understanding of people’s ideas and views. The result of this consultation was the production, on 9 December 2013, of the ‘what we have heard’ report. The report is divided into seven chapters dealing with:
- Aims and expectations of planning;
- Roles, responsibilities and participation;
- Setting directions and coordinating outcomes;
- Planning rules, tools and frameworks;
- Development pathways and processes;
- Alignment, integration and culture; and
- Aspirations for a new planning system.
Each chapter identifies the key issues and ideas raised by the participants and will form the basis of the next phase of the panels work. Broadly, some of the key messages in the report are that:
- The current planning system does deliver reasonably orderly development;
- There is a general lack of transparency which leads to community expectations not being met;
- There is a lack of community engagement at the strategy stage;
- There needs to be a stronger link between planning and infrastructure with clear and fair methodologies for determining funding;
- There is a lack of consideration of cumulative environmental and infrastructure impacts, and a lack of integration between planning policy and environmental matters;
- Development plans are difficult to understand, complex and slow to effect zone changes; and
- Timeframes for the assessment of applications by Council are not monitored.
The panel will now enter the next phase of its work, ‘exploring and discussing’. During this phase the panel will undertake an analysis of what it heard during the ‘listening and scoping’ phase and undertake research looking at evidence for the assertions made during that phase, test that evidence, recommend solutions for substantiated assertions and look at how the solutions can be incorporated into legislation.
Watch this space for updates on the next phase of the panel’s work.