Business Lands Strategic Plan - Coffs Harbour City Council - NSW ...

Coffs Harbour Local Growth Management Strategy
Changes that are affecting home-based businesses include:
The rapid development of the internet and associated technologies;
Globalisation of the marketplace; and
Changing purchasing habits of consumers.
These have an impact on the efficiency of goods and services being delivered to consumers. Homebased
businesses are facing competition not just from local sources but also internationally and they
have to deal with ever-changing customers’ wants and demands. However, positives to emerge from
these changes include cheaper and more extensive advertising, promotions and sales for a company.
The attraction of home based work is flexibility in work hours and the avoidance of a commute to
work. Thus, incidence of home based work is usually highest in areas that are distant from
employment centres. It is also important to note that home based work is more suited to some types
of work than others and professional service, white collar work has traditionally made up a large
percentage of this type of employment.
Home-based work is also attractive to mature age and disabled workers. For example in Coffs Harbour
almost 50% of people who work at home are 55 years and older.
Defining home-based work can be difficult. The Australian Bureau of Statistics in 2005 indicated that
around 2.5 million employed persons (24%) worked some hours from home. According to the Sensis
Telework Insights Report (June 2005) 30% of individuals and 34% of small to medium size businesses
reported some form of home-based work. The difficulty here is in understanding the proportion of
home-based workers who are working for home-based businesses. This has important implications for
this study as it impacts on the need for workspace in employment areas.
2.2 Policy Context
NSW State Plan
The NSW State Plan sets out a range of key initiatives for Government Action. The State Plan focuses
on five areas of activity of the NSW government.
Of relevance to this study, is Chapter 5 of the State Plan, titled ‘Growing Prosperity in NSW’. In this
chapter, the NSW Government affirms that NSW is open for business and outlines the following
priorities for achieving this:
• maintaining and investing in infrastructure to support the growing economy;
• cutting red tape;
• increasing participation in education and training; and
• maintaining the State’s AAA rating.
The State Plan also proposes increasing business investment in rural and regional NSW as a high
priority. The Plan clearly highlights that investing in regional and rural areas to foster economic
development is a key priority for the NSW Government. This will potentially impact on demand for
industrial land within many regions and rural areas throughout NSW.
Business Lands Strategy – Page 15