Following on from the earlier post relating to Land Use Planning, the Environmental Planning and Assessment Act (EPAA) of 1979 was the first piece of legislation that was directed purely at the management of land use planning in NSW. Prior to this, land use had generally been managed through Planning Scheme Ordinances created under Part XIIA (Town and Country Planning Schemes) of the Local Government Act.
The primary reforms introduced by the Act were cited as: a greater prominence for environmental considerations in land use planning; greater public participation in the planning process; and greater emphasis on coordinating planning and development by government and private interests.
While a key element of the Act was that councils were required to develop a Local Environmental Plan (LEP) for land use management, it also prescribed a formal planning hierarchy that included Regional Environmental Plans (REPs) (more recently superseded by Regional [Strategic] Plans) and State Environmental Planning Policies (SEPPs). SEPPs are environmental planning instruments that address planning issues that are considered to have overarching significance—e.g. Hazardous and Offensive Development, Exempt and Complying Development Codes, Rural Lands. The practical effect of a SEPP is often to take power away from local councils in order to prohibit certain types of development in an area or to allow certain types of development even where local controls prohibit it. REPs operated in a similar fashion at a regional level.
While planning legislation has been progressively refined since the introduction of the EPAA for various reasons, not least the potential for corruption, these refinements have generally served to more tightly control the way in which local councils apply the legislation.
Of particular note, one of the 2005 amendments to the Act introduced the Standard Instrument template for LEPs. Prior to this, the format of an LEP was only loosely guided by the Act with the result that there was little consistency between individual LEPs. While the introduction of a mandatory template guaranteed a degree of consistency, it was also criticised in some quarters for stifling local creativity.
In 2009, Joint Regional Planning Panels (JRPPs) were introduced to relieve Councils of the responsibility for assessing a range of significant, generally high value, developments, and with the introduction of mandatory Independent Hearing and Assessment Panels (IHAPs) for all metropolitan councils on 1 March 2018, elected members of these Councils are no longer responsible for the assessment of any Development Applications. Panel members with relevant professional experience are appointed from a pool established by the Department of Planning and Environment, while each Council is responsible for the appointment of a community member to provide a local perspective. Councillors, property developers and real estate agents are ineligible to be Panel members.
The most recent amendments to the Local Government Act reinforce the diminishing role of Councils (the elected body) in the development assessment process, focusing their attention on strategic planning—the identification of longer-term development objectives—rather than on the assessment of individual development applications.