It is very surprising that The Echo’s story on 19 January ‘Council’s planning powers at risk of removal’ has apparently not been taken seriously by our councillors or the community as a whole.
The issue raised by Council’s director Sustainable Environment and Economy, Shannon Burt, is a real risk to our Shire and there cannot be any complacency by our new Council.
Late last year the state government released a policy supposedly designed to hasten planning approvals. It claimed that in addition to delays by councils, many problems were the result of the slow responses of government agencies to provide statutory comments. As a result part of the policy is to restrict timing for agency submissions. A failure to comment will be taken as support for the development. This in itself is a problem as some significant government agencies, as with Council, are under-resourced yet have an important role to play in advising on matters such as road safety and environmental consequences of critical development proposals.
The real pressure, however, will be on local councils, such as Byron, which have difficulty in hiring sufficient staff to deal promptly with development applications.
Minister Stokes issued a ‘Statement of Expectations’ to incoming councils to ‘set clear time frames in which councils are expected to assess and determine regional and local planning proposals’. As Shannon Burt has implied, the threat to our council’s planning powers is obvious – Council will have to rush through decisions to meet what may be unrealistic timelines or risk losing planning powers.
This will be no idle threat. The state government used development approval delays several years ago as a reason to remove many planning powers and place them with the newly created Joint Regional Planning Panel.
There is no doubt that there have been unacceptable local delays in planning approvals, particularly modest homeowner proposals, and Council must make it a priority to streamline the existing systems or risk having its role replaced by an unelected administrator.
For four decades The Echo has printed the stories some people loved, some people hated, and some pretended not to read. If you want us to keep telling the truth, the real truth, not the sugar-coated version. We’ll need your support to keep the presses rolling. 
