URGENT SUBMISSION DEADLINE 5pm 24th JUNE.
Summary
The State is proposing to increase the uptake of ‘Complying Development’ applications to fast track housing.
Complying Development replaces Tweed’s building assessment codes with statewide, cookie cutter, ‘sea of roof’ style, building codes, that bypass consideration of virtually all other Tweed planning controls, bypass public exhibition, and bypass your right to legal appeal.
The character of our Shire would be stripped away, forming one urban sprawl to the next under these State building codes.
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Please feel free to use the following Caldera Environment Centre Submission as a template.
Submission Objecting to the Proposed NSW Variations and Changes to Complying Development.
I object to the proposed NSW ‘Variations and Changes to Complying Development’ provisions as they apply to Tweed Shire.
The proposed changes are designed to facilitate greater use of the State’s complying development pathway rather than requiring a full development assessment.
Complying development is effectively a standardised, state-wide “tick-box” approval process that bypasses Tweed’s Development Control Plan and prevents Council’s ability to exercise their professional judgement on the merits of a proposal, as well as completely bypassing any community consultation.
Tweed Shire contains environmental, scenic and cultural landscape values of national and international significance. The Wollumbin/Mount Warning landscape, the Tweed Caldera and the Gondwana Rainforests of Australia form part of one of Australia’s recognised National Iconic Landscapes. This National Iconic Landscape includes the entirety of the Tweed Shire, the coastal villages, urban settlements, rural lands and scenic roads that collectively contribute to the landscape character and biodiversity values of the Tweed.
The proposed changes eliminate Council’s ability to assess impacts on scenic landscape values through Council’ Scenic Landscape Policy, including views to and from Wollumbin/Mount Warning (listed on the NSW geographic register), the Tweed Caldera (the largest erosion caldera in the sourthern hemisphere), coastal headlands and other significant landscape features. Many of these values rely on careful consideration of context, cumulative impacts and local circumstances that cannot be considered through a standardised complying development checklist.
Tweed Shire contains the highest number of threatened species of any local government area in Australia, including an endangered koala population. Detailed assessment is critical to evaluate impacts on habitat trees, wildlife movement corridors, urban canopy cover, biodiversity connectivity and cumulative environmental impacts to reverse the further decline of local native species, some of which only occur in this region.
The proposal increases the potential for unmitigated land use conflicts in rural areas by eliminating opportunities for community consultation and site-specific assessment on impacts from residential on agricultural activities. This could seriously threaten the viability of the farming community. Complying Development also makes the Rural Land Use Strategy, which seeks to obtain ‘net environmental benefit’, unachievable for these developments.
Council and the community have invested decades of effort in developing fine-grained planning controls tailored to the Tweed’s unique circumstances. These controls represent a carefully considered balance between accommodating growth and protecting one of Australia’s most significant natural, cultural and scenic landscapes. To override these controls through an expanded complying development regime would undermine both the integrity of Tweed’s National Iconic Landscape environmental outcomes and the community’s confidence in the planning system.
I therefore request that the NSW Government exclude Tweed Shire from the proposed expansion of complying development provisions, or alternatively introduce specific exemptions and strengthened safeguards for areas of recognised environmental, biodiversity, scenic landscape and cultural significance.
Yours faithfully,
[Name]Please lodge your submission to the NSW Planning Portal
