The bulk of Perth’s local governments are missing the mark on long-term strategic planning, according to a new Property Council report into the sector.
The bulk of Perth’s local governments are missing the mark on long-term strategic planning, according to a new Property Council report into the sector.
The Property Council of Australia today released its inaugural Benchmarking Greater Perth Local Governments report, a measure of the planning systems in place in jurisdictions across the city.
The report, which comprised a survey of 29 local governments across Perth, showed just two councils displayed a high level of planning performance – the cities of Belmont and Melville.
Property Council WA executive director Lino Iacomella said other concerns arising from the report included the fact that only seven councils had a planning strategy less than five years old, and the average age of council schemes was 14 years.
“Unfortunately, the bulk of councils in greater Perth fell well below what is expected of a best-practice planning system, which is needed to ensure that communities understand a council’s vision for growth in their area and so that developers understand the planning rules,” he said.
Mr Iacomella said a good planning strategy was reviewed at least every five years to set out a vision for the type of development needed for an area to grow.
“The best local planning strategies are those that are developed in consultation with the community and ultimately get implemented as there is a level of community buy-in,” he said.
The report also raised concerns with planning at a state government level, with local councils that took part in the survey saying the Department of Planning and the Western Australian Planning Commission did not process documents in a timely manner.
“It is concerning that some local government’s efforts to plan for their communities are being held up by slow processing times at the state level,” Mr Iacomella said.
“In fact, many would have performed better if the department and WAPC were more efficient.”
The report did find, however, that local councils were very good at processing planning applications, with 88.5 per cent of applications being processed within the necessary time frames.
