Industry group Urban Taskforce believes that the new Housing Supply Expert Panel for South East Queensland can be a good model for New South Wales (NSW),specifically for Sydney.
“The Queensland Minister for Planning, Cameron Dick, has announced a transparent, independent panel of experts to report on land supply, development and housing affordability in South East Queensland,” said Urban Taskforce CEO Chris Johnson. “The use of experts from industry brings real market information to managing growth and this is a good model that could be applied to Sydney,” he added.
Johnson emphasised that the panel will give NSW’s capital access to yearly land supply and development monitoring reports. He said that while Sydney has NSW Department of Planning’s Housing Monitor, this only presents housing approvals and does not report on the reach of land supply, as well as industry issues.
At present, Metropolitan Sydney houses numerous Planned Precincts, where the NSW Government would like to focus development. However, some of Urban Taskforce’s developer members had expressed how a lot of these precincts take too much time in planning.
Precincts such as Anzac Parade, Parramatta Road, and St. Leonards seem to be stuck in a slow dialogue between local councils and the state government. Such delay has been adding significant holding costs to the developers who followed the state government’s lead to build in what were originally called Priority Precincts.
“While the term ‘priority’ has been replaced by ‘planned’ for the precincts hopefully this does not mean that there is no urgency to drive plans for the precincts,” Johnson shared.
The Urban Taskforce is urging the NSW Government to establish a Housing Supply Expert Panel based on the South East Queensland model for Sydney. Ten years ago, the NSW Department of Planning had a similar panel as part of its Metropolitan Development Program but was later dissolved.
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