Council Meeting 18 February, 2021

Item 10.1 relates to the Draft Rural Land Use Strategy and Draft Settlements Strategy.

This Item comes following a Notice of Motion by Cr Last. His motion is:

That Council:

A. In regard to the new Planning submissions, that the Council recruit people from organisations

such as the farmers, commercial representatives, and the general public to form an advisory

panel to advise the Council on the LEP, and

B. That the date for the LEP be extended to 1 June 2021 and further if necessary.

As predicted, Council has focused the response on the term LEP. However they do discuss the forming of an advisory committee, going so far as to say:

A draft LEP has not been prepared; as such, there is no draft LEP for any proposed advisory panel to be established. Previous Councils who have established advisory panels in relation to their development of their LEPs, such as Eurobodalla, and more recently Yass, have not produced the desired outcomes, and the process has taken many years to resolve.

The draft LEP will not be prepared until the final Rural Land Use and Settlements Strategies have been adopted by Council and endorsed by the NSW State Government. A timeframe for this process simply cannot be set.

We know the process Eurobodalla took did indeed take years, however they did achieve the desired outcome which was community support and input, and outcomes which supported and enabled growth of the region. They also ensured landholders were not adversely affected by unreasonable zoning and lot size provisions. They established the lot size of individual areas and applied that size to those areas.

They ensured that owners of land did not have their dwelling entitlements removed unjustly and they encouraged development and small-scale agricultural activities, noting that it plays a significant role in providing food for the region and encouraged suitable tourism opportunities, although not at the expense of other industry.

This has been confirmed through conversations I have had with Eurobodalla Shire Council representatives.

It is of note that Yass Valley achieved similar outcomes, as has Queanbeyan-Palerang, and Hilltops is working their way through the same process to achieve similar goals.

The purpose of engaging with the community early ensures those community members have their concerns and desires heard early in the process and allows a council to develop suitable controls to enable this. The councils above encouraged community input to the development of the Strategies and the LEP. This ensured that the councils did not impose restrictions on the community which were not warranted or unjustified.

Eurobodalla also engaged an independent consultant to develop the Strategies and the basis for the draft LEP. This ensured impartial views, which were not guided by preconceived ideas or plans, and weren't swayed by any alliances (or perceived alliances) with developers and the like.

The extract from Councils Business Papers is below, for your information and reading.

You can read our summary of the outcome from the meeting on this page.