Governing the City State - Chief Minister and Treasury Directorate ...

taking up to four years. ‘Planning ready’ land follows ‘release ready’ – a process takingaround 18 months. When this stage is reached, ‘release ready’ land can be sold to adeveloper and so enter the developers’ pipelines.For ‘zoning-ready’ land to be ‘planning ready’ generally requires an approved Precinct Code– the product of a detailed suburb-based Concept Planning process prepared by ACTPLA,which is embedded in the Territory Plan after approval by the Assembly of a Variation to theTerritory Plan. Other requirements include: EPBC Act clearance, an approved EnvironmentImpact Statement, determination of required environmental offsets, and identification oftrunk infrastructure items. The process can also require field surveys of endangered habitatsand species and extensive analysis and consultation. Once the land has achieved ‘planningready’ status it then must receive clearances from Heritage, Environment, EmergencyServices Authority (ESA), Environment Protection Agency (EPA), ACTEW, and TAMS,including traffic, bushfire and storm water studies; and that it has capital works fundingcommitted and programmed to allow the land to be sold to a developer to be deemed ‘releaseready’.Once ‘release ready’ land achieves this status, it is sold to developers who then commencepreparation of the detailed subdivision and engineering design of the roads, drainage andrelated works, known as Estate Development Plans (EDPs). EDPs normally take on averagearound nine months to finalise, including approval by ACTPLA. Approval of the EDP allowsthere to be an exchange of contracts for sale either to builders or private purchasers. Financialsettlement takes place once the developer has serviced the land, which usually takes at leastnine months following exchange of contracts, at which time builders commence constructionof dwellings on the site.It is inevitable that proper planning and land survey takes time, but the current processes arecomplex, and ill suited to bringing land to the market quickly. Coming at the end of theselong processes and under the pressure to deliver on the Government’s land release program,the LDA is often left very little time to complete the detailed sub-division design required inan EDP and to secure its approval by ACTPLA. While ACTPLA is required to finalise theassessment of an EDP within statutory timeframes, the timeframe does not commence untilACTPLA agrees that the EDP is in a form acceptable for it to be lodged with the Authority.As part of its process of agreeing to lodgment, ACTPLA circulates the draft EDP to secureendorsement from all ‘relevant’ agencies, which can involve 26 different decision-makers!Not unusually, agency comments necessitate amendments to draft EDPs. Although this maybe regarded as appropriate risk management, there is no limit on the number ofre-circulations that may be deemed appropriate. As such, the statutory time limit onACTPLA’s approval does not provide any real indication of the time for approval of an EDP,which in many cases is only achieved after many months of redrafting and circulation toagencies.The response to address the complexities of the assessment processes has been for thecontrolling documents, in particular the Sub-division and Precinct Codes, to become moreSustainability, Housing Affordability and Transport: 304