By the time most people read this, I will no longer be a councillor, so this will be my last post on Local Government matters. It’s been an interesting, if at times challenging, ride over the last 10 years and I have been encouraged by the positive feedback from readers of my ramblings.
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The QPR Blog
…local government stuff you never even thought to ask about…
Signing Off
Development Approval
To close out our recent discussion on the subject of land use zones and permissible land uses, it’s worth looking briefly at a couple of aspects of the approvals process. (more…)
SI Zone Definitions
Following on from last month’s discussion of Standard Instrument (SI) Land Use Zones, let’s take a look at the elements of a Land Use Zone definition. (more…)
SI Land Use Zones
There has been discussion recently in relation to the proposal to rezone parts of our rural residential areas. For residents who have moved into one of these areas since 2014, and even for some who have been there longer, this may all seem more than a little confusing. Without wanting to inflame any political debate, I thought it might be useful to at least provide a little background to the use of the NSW Standard Instrument (SI) template in the preparation of the Palerang Local Environment Plan (PLEP). (more…)
Council Elections (Part 3)
Following on from last month’s post, these were to be my final words on voting in the upcoming [4 September] Council election. Then we received the advice that the elections had been postponed, yet again, to 4 December 2021. But rather than break the flow of our discussion of the election process, and just as much because I didn’t really have anything else immediately at hand to write about, let’s carry on regardless. (more…)
Council Elections (Part 2)
Following from my earlier piece on candidate nominations, I thought it would be useful to cover some of the details of the vote counting process.
This will be, by necessity, a simplified overview. The interested reader should consult Schedule 5 of the Local Government (General) Regulation 2005 for a formal account of the process involved. (more…)
Earthworks (or Illegal Dumping?)
I thought a recent case in the Land and Environment Court was significant enough in its findings to warrant revisiting this subject. We’ve discussed the council controls associated with earthworks on several occasions (Feb 2019, Jun 2012, Sep 2011), but I’ve never quite gone as far as discussing the point at which earthworks might be classified as illegal dumping, a much more serious issue than simply unapproved works. (more…)
Council Elections
I jumped the gun a bit last time I broached this subject, but who could have foreseen what was about to happen back then? Regardless, here we are, with the revised NSW Council election date [4 September 2021] now squarely on the horizon. I’ll have a bit more to say about the election process in the coming months, but I thought that, first up, I might deal with some of the not-so-obvious ‘rules of engagement’ that might help to inform any decision to nominate as a candidate. (more…)
Resulting Lots
This one is a little bit technical. It follows from one of my pieces last year on minimum lot sizes and lot size averaging, and draws on a recent Land and Environment Court (LEC) ruling on an appeal against QPRC’s refusal to allow the subdivision of what is known as a ‘resulting lot’. (more…)
Land Use Zoning
This is a subject that comes up from time to time, often in the context of new subdivisions and development. Land use zoning is one of the tools available to council planners within a Local Environmental Plan (LEP), the legislation that provides the basis for land use planning within a Local Government Area (LGA), to help manage orderly development and promote the style of land use considered appropriate throughout an LGA. (more…)