Community activist Kevin Brooks has blamed high development application assessment times on a poor voluntary redundancy program introduced by Central Coast Council Administrator Rik Hart in 2021.
Speaking at the public forum prior to the February 27 meeting, Brooks said the Q2 Business Review presented to Council at that meeting revealed that development application (DA) assessment times were 58 per cent above target.
The report, which encompasses the second quarter of the current financial year, found that with a target of an 80-day assessment, DAs were taking an average of 126 days to be assessed.
“The average assessment time has doubled since Mr Hart was appointed Administrator and David Farmer CEO,” Brooks said.
He said the poorly designed program, in which high priority areas were cut just as much as lower priority ones, led to the loss of experienced planners and kick-started the decline.
“Over the past year, we’ve been told repeatedly that Council is finally processing more applications than it receives,” he said.
“If so, why is the average DA assessment time worse than 12 months ago?
“Go back even further, of course, and the average assessment time has doubled since the second half of 2020-21 when the current Administrator and CEO were appointed.
“It is time to acknowledge that the current crisis with DA assessment times was kick-started by the Administrator and his senior management team through a poorly designed voluntary redundancy program and insufficient prioritisation.”
Brooks also expressed concern that Council was already behind in 24 per cent of its targets across all business areas, including other priority areas such as water and sewer where performance was significantly below target.
He said Council needed to improve its processes for prioritisation across the organisation in both objective setting and resource allocation.
He also accused Council of “over optimistic” reporting.
“For example, 814 outstanding DAs is clearly well behind the target of less than 750 – yet the report claims this is somehow ‘on track’,” he said.
“It seems odd that we have 127 targets yet only one of them relates specifically to roads.
“And it is concerning that results do appear to be worse in the priority areas.
“Most people would agree water quality is a priority.
“Yet, Council is eight per cent behind target on water quality complaints, 77 per cent behind target on unplanned interruptions, 26 per cent behind target on mains breaks, and 54 per cent behind target on wastewater overflows.
“All this despite a water rate hike in excess of 30 per cent.
“The quarterly business report is an opportunity for leaders to accept responsibility, diagnose the causes of poor performance and present action plans for improvement.”