What is an LEP anyway?

From the NSW Department of Planning & Infrastructure website:

"Local environmental plans (LEPs) guide planning decisions for local government areas. Through zoning and development controls, they allow councils and other consent authorities to manage the ways in which land is used.

LEPs are the primary planning tool to shape the future of communities and also oversee the estimated $20 billion worth of local development that is determined each year."

Accordingly, the Palerang Local Environmental Plan (LEP) is a legal framework for sustainable subdivision and development in the Palerang LGA—it effectively dictates what can and can’t be done in any particular part of the shire. So there’s plenty of interest in LEPs on both sides of the fence, if you’ll pardon the pun. People who make money from real estate want to maximise the return on their investment, and people who enjoy the amenity of their chosen place of residence don’t want to lose that amenity.

Much of the new Palerang LEP (PLEP) is a template, a set of mandatory conditions known as the ‘standard instrument’, laid out by the state government. The standard instrument includes, for example, the description of the various land use zones (e.g. rural, environmental, residential, industrial etc.), and the mandatory objectives that effectively define where the individual zones should be used (e.g. the objective in the Rural Village Zone (RU5) is “to provide a range of land uses, services and facilities that are associated with a rural village”).

To this template, councils have the option to add local clauses to define the particular individual character of their shires (e.g. to the village zone definition, our council added an objective requiring that approved “non-residential uses do not result in adverse impacts to the amenity of existing and future residential premises”). Consideration of the many local clauses recommended by council’s planners is the primary reason for the delays in preparing the PLEP.

Environmental Protection

The most controversial elements have been those local clauses associated with the natural environment, especially in the rural land use zones. Some rural land owners feel that restrictions on the use of their land should be minimal, while other Palerang residents with specific environmental concerns, and indeed council’s own planners, consider that rural land owners should be bound to accommodate certain environmental concerns (just like other residents and ratepayers).

For example, under pressure from rural land holders, the council majority removed from the Primary Production Zone (RU1) the objective “To ensure that the development and management of the land has proper regard for the environmental constraints of the land”.

The zone most affected by this majority treatment was the Environmental Management Zone (E3), which is primarily intended to be used “to provide for low-impact residential development in areas with special ecological, scientific or aesthetic values” and “to ensure that residential development does not have an adverse effect on those values”. Unfortunately, E3 zones often border primary production (RU1) and rural landscape (RU2) zones. There was confusion in the minds of some councillors as to how these individual zones might be applied with the result that several optional clauses that were deemed overly restrictive were removed.

For example the Council majority removed the objective “To maintain, or improve in the long term, the ecological values of existing remnant vegetation of significance including wooded hilltops, river valley systems, major scenic corridors and other local features of scenic attraction” from the environmental management zone.

The obvious solution seemed to be to rezone land that was not truly in need of E3-style protection to either RU1 or RU2, and retain a sound E3 zone definition that could be used to protect genuinely sensitive areas of the shire. What we have at the moment is land that maybe should not have been zoned E3 in the first place, but no way to zone land that requires more restrictive environmental protection.

Some clauses intended to help preserve the amenity of the rural environment were also removed from the newly named Environmental Living Zone (E4) that embraces most of the rural residential land in Palerang. The result is that elements of the landscape that are part of the amenity of these rural residential areas may come under threat from future development under the PLEP.

Minimum Lot Size

The most contentious issue in the LEP for the current Councillors remains that of minimum rural subdivision lot size. This is a uniquely rural issue, in that the lot size in question is that applicable to the new RU1 and RU2 zones. Ultimately the minimum lot size is intended to minimise the fragmentation of viable rural land and subsequent land use conflicts. In this particular case most of the disagreement has been with the state government, not council planners. For some time there were suggestions that lot sizes would need to be increased, reducing subdivision potential, and hence the value, of land. As might be expected, this was not at all popular with many rural landowners.

After protests from several councils, the state government has withdrawn from its initial position and now requires a Rural Study to be undertaken before the minimum lot size can be changed. Until then, the provisions carried over from the six old LEPs inherited from amalgamation will prevail in their respective parts of the shire, something that everyone sees as an unsatisfactory solution.

Where to from here?

When all the tinkering is done, the draft document must be assessed by the NSW Department of Planning and then put out for public comment. Those comments will be taken into consideration when updating the draft prior to adoption. There is now very little room for further delay if the LEP is to be completed within the term of the current council. But then, this whole process is becoming a bit like painting the Harbour Bridge – as soon as it’s finished, it’ll be due for review anyway...

Sustainable living, not primarily $$

There has been some suggestion that the LEP is all about the local economy. There may be a grain of truth in that if you are a large property owner or a developer, but for the vast majority of Palerang's residents the LEP has very little to do with their material wealth, and much more to do with the amenity of their chosen place of residence.

In fact, if there has been a consistent point of conflict in the LEP deliberations, it would be the standoff between those who would have the LEP maximise the opportunities for large landholders to profit from development, and those who would see it as a means of preserving the amenity that has drawn the vast majority of people to live in the area in the first place.