Comparison Of Sustainable Planning Act 2009 And Planning Act 2016 In Queensland State Essay.

Discuss the Sustainable Planning Act 2009 and Planning Act 2016 of Queensland State.

Discuss the development assessment rules that would be applied in the state and the local government.

Discussion of Sustainable Planning Act 2009 of Queensland State

The paper will provide with the discussion of Sustainable Planning Act 2009 and Planning Act 2016 of Queensland State. It will present an analysis of the key differences among the development rules of both the Act. It will demonstrate the changes that would occur during the implementation of the new Act that would differ from the current Act. Thus, the paper will discuss the development assessment rules that would be applied in the state and the local government. The entire paper will focus on the differences between the new Act and the current Act based on the development assessment process.

Sustainable Planning Act 2009 is considered to be a framework to integrate development and planning assessment so that its effect and development are managed in a way that is sustainable ecologically. The purpose of this Act is to attain ecological sustainability by managing the process that leads to development. The Act ensures that the process is efficient, effective and accountable and provides sustainable results. It aims to manage the impact of development on the environment that includes managing the utilization of premises (Boyes and Elliott, 2015). It also focuses on containing integration and coordination of planning at the state, regional and local levels. This particular Act blinds each along with the state, thus to some extent the legislative power of the Parliament allows other states and commonwealth. Moreover, the state or Commonwealth could not be prosecuted for an offense against this Act.

Under this Act there comprise of some State planning instruments such as a regional plan, a state planning policy and a state planning regulatory provisions. The Minister should create a draft based on the proposed instrument before making a State planning instrument. There also consist of some local planning instruments such as a planning scheme policy, a temporary local planning instrument and a planning scheme. The Minister and a local government should be satisfied with the planning scheme of the local government. Therefore, it is the responsibility of each local government to complete a review of its planning scheme (van den Nouwelant et al., 2015). The review should involve an assessment of the attainment of the strategic outputs specifically in the planning scheme. After the completion of reviewing the planning scheme, the local government must propose to create a new scheme and amend the scheme. It can be seen that if the local government is satisfied with the scheme as they believe that the scheme is suitable to undertake without any amendment.

In May 2016 the Queensland Parliament passed The Planning Act 2016 which came into effect on 3^rd July 2017. Planning Act 2016 is made to provide an accountable, coordinated, integrated, transparent, effective and efficient system of land use of development and planning assessment. It facilitates the attainment of ecological sustainability. The primary purpose of this particular Act is to facilitate ecological sustainability that provides prevention of natural systems and ecological processes at wider, state, regional and local level (Steele and Dodson, 2014). It also focuses upon ecological development and maintaining the social, physical, economic and cultural well-being of society and people. To attain ecological sustainability the systems that are included under this Act are, development assessment system, planning scheme policies, temporary local planning instruments, planning schemes, regional plans, and state planning policies. This Act facilitates with an Advancing purpose that provides equality among present and future generations, provide opportunities for the society to be getting engaged in making decisions and any more (Lu et al., 2015). While executing functions under the State Development Act, this Act blinds each that includes Coordinator-General of the state.

Discussion of Planning Act 2016 of Queensland State

This particular Act not only includes state planning and local planning instrument but also superseded planning schemes. State and local planning instrument which is implemented if the Minister proposes to amend or make the plan. Whereas, superseded planning schemes are implemented if an individual seeks to apply proposed development or proposed development applications. It is considered to be a planning scheme that is together linked with planning scheme policies that were immediately developed than any other events (Wear, 2016). This Act also possesses compensation which applies division during a change in adverse planning. It also includes the development of infrastructure of the designation of premises. It is a decision of the local government or Minister to recognize the premises for the development process. Under this Act, the development assessment is based on the following categories they are, accepted, assessable and prohibited development which does not require development approval.

Analysis of the key differences between the development assessment rules while applying Planning Act 2016 and Sustainable Planning Act (SPA) 2009

The state legislation developed a new overarching policy and planning framework for the state for land use planning along with state and local governments that will share responsibility for this supplies. The Planning Act 2016 is passed that replaced the current legislation The Sustainable Planning Act 2009. The Queensland Government has planned to apply some of the major planning reforms in Planning Act 2016 that were not present in Sustainable Planning Act 2009. Thus, the new system consists of three major development processes they are, assessable, accepted and prohibited development, whereas SPA consists of five major elements. In other words, the new legislation will facilitate improvement to the planning system of Queensland that will differ from the current system (Serrao-Neumann et al., 2017). Now there will be only two state planning instruments such as regional plans and State Planning Policy (SPP). The compliance assessment, Queensland’s planning provisions and State Planning Regulatory Provisions and permits that were utilized in current legislation will no longer be used in new legislation. As compared to the current Act the new Act provides three major categories of development as well as the concept for classifying instrument that classifies development. Thus, a classified instrument specifies certain types of development. If the development is accepted the approval for the development is not required and if it is prohibited than an application for development could be made. Assessable developments could either be an impact assessment or a code assessment. In addition, the new Act needs longer frames for mandatory consultation on state planning instruments and society consultation on new planning schemes by local government which was not required earlier (England, 2015). For infrastructure charges, an additional provision has been added by permitting the local governments to apply charges in certain situations. The new legislation system also facilitates automatic indexing of charges. A significant change has been made to the definitions of constitute material changes, operational work, and building work.

The Act will facilitate the formation of Development Assessment Rules (DA Rules) and will present a framework for the assessment system. All these factors will be set out separately for the assessment process that should be followed when an applicant withdraws, changes or makes a development application. Greater emphasis would be given to the development of ecological sustainability and prevention of heritage buildings along with proposed developments that needs evaluation by an independent body (Warnken and Mosadeghi, 2018). However, it will also possess transitional provisions that would protect old arrangements to a great extent. Along with State planning policy and regional plans The Planning Act 2016 will also certain elements are as follows:

• Dispute resolution
• Ministerial power
• Enforcement and offenses arrangements
• Development and planning assessment
• Arrangements to authorize and recognize the development of key infrastructure
• A development assessment system
• Planning Scheme policies
• Temporary Local Planning Instruments
• Planning Schemes

All these elements were not included in the current legislation Act. In this new Act, the development categories are presented differently from current legislation as a core element of the reforms. The duration and effects of development approvals when they will lapse and how they could be canceled, changed or extended are provided in the new Act. To a development approval, the process for making a change which is considered to be a permissible change in the current Act has been amended to facilitate greater clarity (Cronshaw and Grafton, 2016). However, the new Act assures that the concepts that were acceptable at the repeal of the current Act will remain acceptable under new Act. The development assessment of the new Act involves the following stakeholders such as, submitter, referral agency, assessment manager and applicant who provides with the framework of development assessment. The new Act also provides development applications that will present the overall details of the assessment manager’s role. It will describe development permits, preliminary and development approvals (Anguelovski et al., 2016). However, under the provision of this new Act certain rules will be included that were not applied in the current Act such as,

• Standard situations for considered approval
• Reviving and lapsing of DA
• When DA is undertaken is to be made properly
• The thought of submission made properly
• The process of carrying out public notification

The new Act allows the Planning Minister to prepare the appropriate Development Assessment Rules for the process of DA. When the DA Rules will be developed most of the major processes of the development assessment system would retain a majority of key components (Rogers et al., 2016). The current and new development processes possess a huge difference as the information and referral stage is categorized into two parts in the new development assessment process which is shown in figures given below,

Figure: Current Development Assessment process

(Source: Frew, Baker and Donehue, 2016)

Figure: New Development Assessment process

(Source: Neale, 2016)

In the future the following factors of DA Rules such as decision, public notification, and information request, referral and application must be included in the new Act. However, the new system is focusing upon the development of ecological sustainability for future progress. It is observed that under the new Act the local government could increase the infrastructure charges for parks and libraries. Therefore, it will concentrate more on enhancing the process of development application by implementing new DA Rules (Searle, 2016). The new imposed Act might deal with the problem of providing poor quality and insufficient information to the applicants. The applicants might face numerous challenges such as, unacceptable impacts that would an impact on the submission of assessable developments and poor quality plan.

Conclusion

The paper concluded by providing with an analysis of development assessment rules while applying Sustainable Planning Act 2016 and Planning Act 2009. It is observed that the Planning Act 2009 has been replaced by the Sustainable Planning Act of 2016. This new Act as proposed various changes that were not provided in the current Act. It can be seen from the paper that the new Act had implemented some development assessment rules based on state planning policy and regional plans. It also discussed the changes that would implement in the future as well as the challenges that would arise due to such implementations.

References

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