Exhibition Item

A Planning Agreement is a voluntary legal agreement between a planning authority (Council) and a developer. Under an executed agreement, a developer may agree to:

• Provide land,
• Pay a monetary contribution,
• Provide another material public benefit, or
• Any combination of the above, to be used or applied towards a public purpose.

Council can use Planning Agreements in addition to, or in lieu of the collection of monetary contributions under section 7.11 or section 7.12 of the Environmental Planning & Assessment Act 1979 (the Act). Planning Agreements are governed by a set of guiding principles that ensure nexus, transparency, fairness, and flexibility of planning decisions.

The proposed Policy will:

• Ensure compliance with the regulatory requirements under the Act and Regulations governing the use of Planning Agreements by Council,
• Ensure probity, consistency and transparency in the decision-making process,
• Enable flexibility in the delivery of local infrastructure planning,
• Enhance the range and extent of development contributions made by development towards public facilities in the LGA,
• Outline Council’s specific policies on the use of Planning Agreements, and
• Set out procedures for the making and assessment of applications by developers.

The new proposed policy is a modification of the existing policy in terms of language and format to better align with the current Practice Notes, making it difficult to highlight specific changes. However, key changes are listed below:

• Legislative changes: updated references to the Regulations,
• Terminology: updated list of definitions (Page 4),
• Procedures: new section outlining the indicative steps for processing Planning Agreements, (Page 32) and
• Acceptability test: additional principles for the assessment and acceptability of a Planning Agreement (Page 9).