Following on from an earlier post on the history of Local Government in NSW, one significant change introduced with the Local Government Act of 1906 was a move away from a rating system that was based solely on the ability to pay to one that also recognised the benefit derived from public expenditure in areas such as road building and maintenance. Rates thus became an incentive to develop, with undeveloped land attracting the same rate as a neighbouring property that had been cleared and built upon.
Amongst other things, the 1919 amendment to the Act delegated specific controls in relation to land subdivision and the proclamation of ‘residential districts’. These provided local councils with a means of regulating residential density and amenity, an early form of land use zoning employed in urban environments to prohibit uses such as ‘trades’ and ‘industries’ in designated areas.
Functions within local government changed very little in the period between 1919 and the 1970s, although there were two significant post-war developments that have shaped Local Government as we know it today. The first was the increase in welfare and cultural services, such as subsidised meals and cultural festivals, encouraged to some extent by Commonwealth funding programs. The second was the introduction in 1945, through the Local Government (Town and Country Planning) Amendment Act, of a comprehensive land use planning system that allowed councils to prepare Planning Scheme Ordinances (PSOs) that could contain provisions for regulating and controlling the use of land and the purposes for which land may be used.
This was a significant change. It involved more than just building regulation or the control of subdivision—it related to the use of land, impact on neighbours and wider environmental concerns. There was initial resistance to the introduction of PSOs given the existing emphasis on encouraging rather than restricting land development, but individuals soon recognised that land-use control could protect and enhance property values—there was a financial bonanza to be had at the stroke of the council’s planning pen.
There was a subsequent attempt to provide a broader context for planning through higher-level regional plans that would address matters of public interest beyond ratepayer preoccupations. In the event, local interests prevailed yet again and these plans were abandoned. It is to be noted, however, that like other reforms it simply proved to be ahead of its time and was to return to become a fundamental element of the NSW State planning system.
The move towards planning as we know it today came on the back of global environmentalism, which had its roots in the UK and USA in the 1960s following events such as the hydrogen bomb testing on Bikini Atoll, the Santa Barbara oil spill and a growing awareness of the broader impact of pesticides such as DDT. The existing focus on development for primarily economic gain was challenged by local action groups, with the Green Bans of the early seventies exemplifying the changing local mood. At the time, however, this was essentially an urban movement that was largely non-existent in rural areas.
Remarkably, the first broadly applicable legislation controlling development in NSW appeared as recently as 1979, with the introduction of the Environmental Planning and Assessment Act.
I’ll look at some of the more recent developments in this area in a subsequent post.
[Content was drawn heavily from The Development of Local Government in Australia, Focusing on NSW: From Road Builder to Planning Agency to Servant of the State Government and Developmentalism, Andrew H. Kelly, University of Wollongong, 2011]
Pete Harrison ~ The QPR Blog cross-reference
2 October 2018 @ 08:57
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