24 April 2014

We pleased to see that the Department of Planning understands that major urban renewal projects must be supported by flexible planning controls as the market will change over the life of the project. However, the state and local government must drive renewal and this would be further facilitated with the introduction of a code assessment approval system for the precinct.

Quick overview by Gadens.

14 April 2014

With respect to this benchmarking exercise, the Urban Taskforce is of the view that the cost of local infrastructure plan preparation, management and administration should not be passed on to the development industry as an additional cost in the plan. Plan preparation and general administration of a local infrastructure plan should be considered part of councils’ core responsibilities.

05 March 2014

The Urban Taskforce is supportive of the Benchmarking exercise being undertaken by theIndependent Pricing and Regulatory Tribunal. We believe that it is essential that clear benchmarks be established based on credible independent data. However, the benchmarking exercise must not be seen as the end point of an investigation into infrastructure funding. The benchmarks established must be tested in the real world and regularly reviewed.

The Urban Taskforce's Property Person of the Year is  a major fund raising event for two charities- Warrah Homes & St Vincent's Prostate Cancer Research. The 2012 Property Person of the Year, Ross McDiven of Brookfield Multiplex went further than raising money and organised a Bathroom Blitz to restore many substandard bathrooms in Warrah’s accommodation buildings. Brookfield Multiplex organised free contributions from around 20 consultants and subcontractors who supplied free materials and fittings along with labour to transform the old bathrooms. Click here to view the flyer explaining what the Bathroom Blitz did and for a list of all those involved.

05 March 2014

While we accept that the Council has a delicate balancing act to perform, we believe that the draft Blue Mountains Local Environmental Plan 2013 ("the draft plan") tries to do more than it's intended purpose. That is, the draft plan includes many zone objectives, clauses and standards that are unnecessary, inappropriate for inclusion in a statutory plan or simply wrong, discriminatory and anticompetitive.

14 February 2014

While supporting the general direction of the changes to BASIX we are concerned about timing relative to the current concerns with housing affordability.  We are aware that the NSW Government is looking at a number of regulatory changes to prescribed payments, bonds for defects and even levies to subsidise lower cost housing and that all of these could lift NSW housing costs by around 10%.  The Urban Taskforce argues that more stringent BASIX requirements which will increase the cost of new housing should not be introduced at this point in time.

21 January 2014

We are dismayed to see the attacks leveled at the Planning Bill at the end of last year which will at best result in a compromised, watered down version of the Bill that bears little relationship to the White Paper reforms.

19 December 2013

The Planning Bill has not yet cleared parliament and we argue that the

suggested amendments to the Bill will significantly reduce its effectiveness and cannot be supported by the Urban Taskforce in its current form. However, the Green and White Papers outline changes to the planning system that do not require the introduction of new legislation and we say that their proper implementation would achieve much for the development industry and delivery of urgently needed housing.