What would Peninsula Council do?

A planning strategy - the system and the substance

The basic principles

• Peninsula Council would apply the principles of the Rule of Law to planning. These include clear, easily-understood and consistently-applied planning provisions.
• Peninsula Council would apply similar standards of Truth and Honesty to its planning process as apply in consumer law.
• Peninsula Council's planning policies and strategies would reflect the community's aspirations for the future. They would be meaningful documents and would be more than simply a bureaucratic exercise and would not settle for the legal minimum.
• Peninsula Council would have its own Community Strategic Plan and its own Local Strategic Planning Statement, which would inform its own Local Environment Plan and Development Control Plan.
• Peninsula Council would regard its Development Control Plan as having a similar level of enforceability as Local Environment Plans.
• Peninsula Council would ensure all its plans and strategies were meaningful, actionable and measurable and provide a simple and clearly-expressed commitment, particularly where they have planning consequences or must be implemented through planning provisions.

Planning processes

• Peninsula Council would have transparent planning processes, including publishing pre-lodgement meeting minutes along with the associated development application.
• Development application documents, including environmental assessments of endangered and threatening species and communities, would be placed in the public domain in the greater public interest (not constrained by copyright or privacy).
• Peninsula Council would not normally approve "variances" to planning provisions, and would only do so where a strong case was made. It would require any variation to be supported with a full explanation of how the objectives of the Development Control Plan are met to a significantly greater extent than complying with the provisions. The council's own planning assessment would spell out in detail the justification for approving any variance it decides to permit.
• Peninsula Council would see itself as an even-handed regulator. As such, it would have no obligation to approve development applications on the basis of their profitability.
• Peninsula Council see its responsibility to apply the intentions to the letter of the planning provisions even-handedly. The decision about the profitability of a proposal would be regarded as one for the proponent. Approval of a development application would not take into account the profitability of the project for the proponent. Proponents would be expected to make their own decisions about the viability of a development on the basis of no variance to the planning provisions.
• Peninsula Council would make its own assessment of all claims made in a development application, including claims made by qualified consultants. Where necessary, Peninsula Council would train its regulatory planners to be able to make such independent informed assessments, or hire its own specialist to undertake the assessment.

Vision and strategy

• Peninsula Council would capture the Peninsula community's vision for its future, in a meaningful and actionable form.
• Peninsula Council would have a community-level Peninsula Community Strategic Plan and a Peninsula Local Strategic Planning Statement.
• Peninsula Council would conduct a strategic planning review of the Peninsula, incorporating an evaluation of the aims, achievements and failures of the current and previous planning provisions under Central Coast Council and Gosford Council.
• In its review, it would address the issues and concerns raised by the Central Coast Local Planning Panel about planning on the Peninsula.
• Peninsula Council would revisit the Peninsula Urban Directions Strategy, with a view to learning from it to achieve the community's vision for its future.
• Peninsula Council would have costed long-term costed and actionable publicly-available strategic plans for infrastructure provision and maintenance, including for roads, drains, sewerage, water and green infrastructure (including shade trees and native bushland) on the Peninsula, as well as for public and private open space.