Ease the brakes on new homes
Remove the outdated hurdles holding back housing, says Brendan Blomeley
AS our population continues to grow, largely due to interstate migration (“Tassie move felt like coming home,” Mercury, October 10), the demand for housing, particularly in southern Tasmania, rages unabated.
Councils cannot find nor in many cases afford more staff to respond to ever- increasing statutory responsibilities. COVID- 19 has altered the way we all operate and this provides the ideal opportunity for government at all three levels to cut red and green tape. At the local government level, we need to streamline government services and importantly, ensure ratepayers’ dollars are wisely invested. As such, a better answer to the housing and planning challenges that beset our state is to reduce the complexity of planning controls and statutory processes.
To address this, the government ought to consider changes that will make it easier for councils, landowners and developers to more quickly determine the status of their proposals. For example, do they need a planning permit? Can they make minor modifications to the design so a discretionary process can be avoided? Can developers confidently self- assess whether a permit is required?
The State Government’s Planning Policy Unit lacks the resources to produce overdue reviews of the regional land use strategies, state policies, practice bulletins, and the Tasmanian Planning Scheme.
Review of the Regional Strategy is well overdue and is required for a co- ordinated and rationally planned approach to sustainable growth in and around greater Hobart. Through the Hobart City Deal, it is pleasing to see some preliminary work on key issues, through the metropolitan strategy, that hopefully will result in the desperately needed expansion of the Urban Growth Boundary. Another major handbrake on economic development is the Land Titles Office and their antiquated modus operandi. The outdated reliance on hard copies is unnecessary and causes time delays between exchanges of documents between surveyor and council and in turn, council and the Land Titles Office. Ultimately, transactions between developer and home builder are delayed.
This situation has compounded over the past six months due to COVID, as there is a significant backlog of titles awaiting approval, due to logistical difficulties associated with staff working from home and the inability to process digital plans and documents.
There is technology, such as Bluebeam, that is in use in other jurisdictions and is able to confirm that plans are correctly scaled. This approach will deliver precious time savings to all parties in transferring plans, the efficient processing and recording of digital plans and allow surveyors to make amendments quickly.
Most importantly, if we are serious about achieving significant change that delivers sustainable economic development, both the Local Government ( Building and Miscellaneous Provisions) Act and the Strata Titles Act, must be overhauled. These outdated and cumbersome Acts unnecessarily impact the costs and time associated with selling and building on land. Victoria managed to repeal similar laws and replace them with a streamlined Subdivision Act. Why can’t we?