2 December 2008

ACTPLA Hunky Dory - but going under the knife

| johnboy
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Is there any body in Canberra as maligned as the ACT Planning and Land Authority (ACTPLA)?

The ABC reports that Mr Stanhope has promised his new developer friends that he’s going to take a look at how the authority goes about its business.

    ‘”In these times we will begin to see our unemployment rate rise, we will begin or see the economy continuing to slow and I’m determined that it not be anything that the Government does or doesn’t do that costs anybody in Canberra a job.”

    “We’ve committed to a complete review essentially of our operations and the way in which we operate timelines, planning processes, statutory approvals and our responsibilities for ensuring at this particularly difficult time – having regard to the global financial crisis – that we the Government do everything that we can do to assist in the stimulation of the economy.”‘

Fire up those bulldozers boys.

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ACTPLA, and it’s predecessor, PALM deserve (almost) all the criticism they get. The remaining responsibility has been with a succession of weak planning ministers, Smyth, Corbell and that new bloke.

Developers by their very nature are predatory and greedy. They will push every boundary, and then some. Just look at what happens around the country when their misdeeds are exposed (think Wollongong and Rockdale). They do the same here, but it just hasn’t been exposed yet.

What ACTPLA needs to do is set in place a set of agreed performance standards, with no deviation whatsoever. That way, pressure from developers to let through scungy DAs would stop.

Why won’t they do this? Because Ministers like to be able to do favours, and planners think they know it all.

First step should be to get rid of any scope for divergence from agreed planning processes.

The new rules are STOOPID.

I had a building extension approved across the counter not too many years ago in 45 minutes.

Submitted a change to brick garage that involved a new doorway and the approval while merit based took a month and they wrote a bloody novel about how it complied with merit based rules.

Ridiculous red tape.

It could be giving developers open slather – but let’s hope the Greens deal with that. It could be about getting developers to better use the system they helped create – remember that the changes to the Territory Plan were two years in the making and went through a LOT of consultation (and it was genuine until Corbell lost planning).

It could also be about getting ACTPLA getting it’s act together. This would be really good. But I hope they don’t go round sacking anyone again, or fircing redundacies. The fake budget crisis of 2006 saw a lot of redunancies, sadly; and there’s only so many good people you can sack before a place ceases to function.

Is this the same chief minister who said his poor standing in the last election was because he was perceived as arrogant and out of touch with the electorate. Leopards certainly don’t change their spots!

Gungahlin Al3:46 pm 02 Dec 08

Was seated with Neil Savery and MBA suits for brekky up on the hill this morning, until they scarpered for said meeting with Stanhope.

I wouldn’t be too concerned about the carpet being laid out for developers. The main blockage planning is having is that too many certifiers and builders are putting their DAs through merit track assessment rather than code track or even exempt track, even when the development conforms with the requirements for those assessment methods. The volume of basic DAs going through the full assessment process (inc public notification) lately is just crazy.

Seems the private certifiers don’t have enough faith in the quality of their our work…

The industry players need to stop blaming ACTPLA when they haven’t bothered to learn the new Territory Plan properly.

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