Gosford Council voted to prepare a submission to the NSW Department of Planning supporting reforms to the Pre-Gateway Review Process, which is a process for reviewing planning proposals that a council has refused or failed to consider.
The proposed changes to the review process will enable greater transparency, improved timeframes and greater community awareness. However, the reforms do identify an increasing role for Joint Regional Planning Panels, who will carry out the assessment and determination of the pregateway reviews.
As part of its submission, Gosford Council resolved that it would suggest that a number of possible changes were made to the role of Joint Regional Planning Panels in plan making, community engagement and development assessment processes.
Some of the reform ideas that Council resolved to put forward included allowing councils that demonstrate strategic capacity for regional planning and strong assessment capability to be the determining authority for development applications of regional signifi cance instead of Joint Regional Planning Panels.
The Council has also called for the membership of the joint panels to be reconsidered to make sure each included a majority of regional experts and representatives, and enabled greater involvement from expert urban planning staff from the region.
Email, Nov 11, 2015
Gosford Council media