Last week’s Echo contained statements on holiday letting (HL) by NSW Planning Minister Paul Scully, which reveal his failure to understand the recent Independent Planning Panels (IPP) report. The state government previously attempted to shoehorn HL into the housing SEPP as exempt development (which effectively means it needs no regulations). But the IPP report, (the first independent assessment of HL in the state) reveals HL’s inconsistency with existing planning laws, and Scully needs to be informed of such.
Evidently he is considering advice from just the mayor and Byron Council staff, but what is that ‘secret Council business’ advice? Repeated requests to Council for a copy go unanswered. Whatever was sent was not put before us residents or adopted at a Council meeting.
Scully states consideration of large rezonings of residential zones to allow HL (which would mean increased loss of residential accommodation), and states consideration of ‘existing use rights’, but none exist for unauthorised HL development, especially noting that HL is unlawful in our LEP residential zones where tourist facilities are prohibited, (with the exception of B&Bs and managed apartments which are subject to a successful development application consent).
The federal government mandates that any use of over ten per cent of a property requires a separate development category. A resident sub-renting for the entire time period they go away on holiday is a subsidiary residential use. But putting the property, or a room, on a website for multiple HL rentals in that same period is a tourist use, and needs a tourist category, which is prohibited in residential living zones.
This HL ‘disrupter’ use has come with many inconsistencies to existing planning law, and needs to be pulled back into existing planning law, as per the IPP report. The failure of Byron Council to put its proposed advice to residents before sending it to Scully, together with Scully’s Echo statements, give no confidence that the IPP’s first independent HL assessment will be fully acted on.
Scully will make a report that will come to Council – be ready to jump in, to again raise the same issues that were so well put by the community to the IPP. We may still have to further defend Byron Shire from Scully turning it into just a HL dormitory for tourists.
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. 
