The Environmental Planning and Assessment Act is New South Wales’ primary legislation for land use planning and development assessment. It governs environmental planning instruments like State Environmental Planning Policies (SEPPs) and Local Environmental Plans (LEPs).
Key purposes of the Act are to promote sustainable development, protect the environment, ensures community participation, and assesses development impacts via consents and environmental impact statements. It also provides pathways for exempt, complying, local, state-significant, and designated projects.
These planning law changes will significantly reduce protections for the environment.
The changes will be decided without public consultation and with no detailed explanatory material.
One of the changes shifts the Act’s objects from foregrounding the wellbeing of the community and the environment in decision making to simply promoting development. It does this by:
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- Removing:
“(a) to promote the social and economic welfare of the community and a better environment by the proper management, development and conservation of the State’s natural and other resources.”
Inserting instead:
“(a) to promote land uses that improve the social and economic welfare of communities.”
“(c) to promote productivity through the development and management of the State and its resources”
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2. Removing:
“(e) to protect the environment, including the conservation of threatened and other species of native animals and plants, ecological communities and their habitats”
Inserting instead:
“(d) to provide for the conservation of threatened species of native animals and plants and ecological communities and their habitats” .
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Another of the changes is a new assessment pathway (“targeted development assessment”) that is “unconstrained and expressly prohibits consideration of environmental impacts and the public interest.” note the EDO.
There are many other changes to the Act, please refer the Environmental Defenders Office briefing note linked here.
The Act containing the changes purports to relate to housing, but will affect ALL types of development across NSW.
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Caldera Environment Centre
42 Wollumbin Street, Murwillumbah
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