Mackay sets lowest hotel assessments

MACKAY has the lowest assessment fee for a hotel among North Queensland’s three coastal cities, according to figures provided by the councils.

The claim comes after revelations Cairns businessman Adam Adams withdrew a development application for an 87-room hotel in Townsville’s CBD, partly because of the size of the assessment fee being sought by the council.

The withdrawal sparked criticism from developer Peter Tapiolas that Townsville’s planning fees were high and that the council needed to be more supportive of development, while town planner Martin Clark said the council was the most inefficient organisation he’d had the misfortune to deal with.

Yesterday, the Bulletin asked the Townsville, Cairns and Mackay councils three questions on the assessment fee for an 87-room hotel, the percentage of 2018-19 code assessable development applications assessed within the statutory time frame and the number of development applications received in 2018-19.

Mackay claimed victory on hotel assessment, citing a fee of $19,835 for an “impact assessable” application, Townsville quoted a fee of $31,680 and Cairns said it would charge $33,487. The fees do not include infrastructure charges, which are more onerous. A recent 58-unit Townsville development was quoted $918,707 in infrastructure charges.

On code-assessable development applications assessed within the statutory time frame, Mackay provided monthly averages of between 57 and 100 per cent but was still working to the former 40-day time frame rather current 35 days.

Cairns said that of its 403 code-assessable applications, 75 per cent were decided within 35 days and where an extension was necessary agreement was sought from the applicant.

Townsville did not give a 2018-19 figure but said 90 per cent of applications lodged since 2017 were processed within legislated time frames.

On development application numbers, Mackay had 368 for “planning” assessment, Cairns quoted 511 “planning” applications, while Townsville said it had 400 development applications and 1071 “standard building applications”.

Queensland CEO of the Urban Development Institute, Kirsty Chessher-brown, said that because of its advocacy, the Townsville council had reduced its infrastructure charges for residential uses in 2019. than the