Forum –
I appreciate that a great deal of work has gone into the draft Local Environment Plan (LEP) and Development Control Plan (DCP) and the consideration of submissions to the public exhibition at the officer level.
It would seem that it has all taken a long time, four-and-a-half years since amalgamation, to get to the first stage of the comprehensive review of Central Coast Council’s planning controls.
The Administrator adopted the draft documents at Council’s December 14 meeting in name only, as the actual adopted documents were not attached to the report and it is anyone’s guess when they will be available for public viewing in their entirety.
The first stage merely involves the merging of the Wyong and Gosford controls into consolidated documents, with a few changes around the edge to facilitate consistency.
Most of the submissions lodged requested changes outside the ambit of the first stage exhibition.
In fact, 327 submissions alone related to a view that land at 301 Avoca Dr, Avoca, should be rezoned for public open space, with the staff response that it was not considered appropriate for sporting fields and was outside the first stage review.
No substantive progress appears to have been made towards reviewing underlying zonings or the finalisation of protection for the Coastal Open Space System (COSS) lands, maybe in another four and half years.
There’s a lot of management inaction, followed by a flurry of activity that is a bit half-baked.
Had the process not taken so long, it might have been advantageous for the final documents to be re-exhibited.
This is not an uncommon approach to ensure a broad consensus on the final documents.
It would seem that management has taken the opportunity to rush through these strategic documents and, despite the Council media fanfare, it would appear that there is still work to be done prior to them being actually “adopted”.
Go figure.
Given the complexity of the documents to the uninitiated, I must wonder how the Administrator had the time or inclination to assess the merits of all the issues that would otherwise be considered by councillors on behalf of their constituencies.
It really looks like the bride was rushed to the altar for the sake of management trying to appear proactive in these troubled times.
Email, Jan 12
David Kitson, Budgewoi Ward Community Representative on the Local Planning Panel