Recent amendments to the state’s main planning law just adopted by NSW Labor will result in councillors losing their powers to approve development applications (DAs).
The Environmental Planning and Assessment Amendment (Planning System Reforms) Bill 2025 became law, receiving almost universal support from the members of the NSW Parliament last week. It comes with an array of new consent authorities to oversee housing delivery.
New local planning panels to be established
NSW Planning Minister Paul Scully (Labor) confirmed with The Echo that yet-to-be-established local planning panels, along with local council staff, will decide local DAs instead of elected councillors.
Regional planning panels, which currently bypass the roles of local councils as consent authorities, and decide upon large and significant DAs, will be dissolved.
The creation of more panels with more layers of bureaucracy is part of a push to simplify planning, says the government.
There is no time-frame provided for the rollout and implementation of these local planning panels.
Under the new Act (Division 2.5), ‘A council may constitute a single local planning panel for the whole of the area of the council’, meaning that there could potentially be 128 new local planning panels across the state.
Division 2.5 also states a local planning panel will comprise four members, who are appointed by the relevant council. The panel will consist of: an ‘approved independent person appointed as the chairperson of the panel with relevant expertise’; ‘two other approved independent persons with relevant expertise; and ‘a representative of the local community who is not a councillor or mayor’. Councillors, property developers and realtors are ineligible to be a panellist, but ‘planning consultants’ are eligible.
ICAC recommendations
Minister for Planning and Public Spaces Paul Scully said, ‘The planning panel changes reflect corruption protection recommendations of the ICAC’.
The Echo has asked the ICAC to detail the corruption protection recommendations.
Scully continued, ‘The elected members [councillors] will continue to set the strategic planning direction for a council including preparing or reviewing development control plans, local environmental plans, strategic plans, policy direction, submissions to the department on policies or reforms and making representations on behalf of community’.
‘Importantly these set the boundaries that development proposals must adhere to in any given area.’
Once local planning panels with local representatives are in place, all local DAs will be determined by either the local planning panel or by council staff, as guided by strategic planning set by the relevant council.
‘The vast majority of these processes and decisions are already made by council officers under delegation,’ said Scully.
‘The changes stemming from the removal of regional planning panels will be staged and subject to further consultation. Councils will be supported by the NSW government in the administration of these changes’.
The Minns Labor government said in a statement it has ‘delivered the largest housing and planning reform agenda in the state’s history’.
‘For decades, the planning system has grown overly complex and slow, holding back the delivery of new homes, job-creating investments, and adding unnecessary costs and delays to the construction pipeline’.
Calls for inclusion
The peak body representing the state’s councils, Local Government NSW (LGNSW), say they have ‘repeatedly sought to keep councils and communities at the table including calling for the inclusion of democratically elected representatives on the proposed local planning panels’.
LGNSW President, Phyllis Miller OAM, said, ‘These local leaders know their communities, they know the challenges and the opportunities, and it is critical that they be included on local planning panels’.
‘The government concedes that these are the most significant reforms to our planning system in 50 years and it is councils across the state that will be on the front line to see if the reforms are bringing about the benefits the government is hoping for. That is why I will continue to call on the NSW government to establish a formal implementation panel with transparent membership and local government representation to ensure the roll out takes place in a measured and informed way.
‘These reforms will only work with broad, open and meaningful sector consultation.’
Calls for consultation
In a statement Byron Shire Greens councillors said, ‘Council wrote to the premier, the leader of the opposition, the minister and shadow ministers for planning and public spaces, and the member for Ballina expressing strong opposition and requesting formal public consultation before the reforms progressed’.
They say the new laws ‘fundamentally weaken environmental assessment requirements and remove the community’s rights to protect local ecosystems’.
Councillor Elia Hauge added, ‘The housing crisis is being used as cover to weaken environmental protections that were blocking profitable but destructive developments.’
What else do the reforms do?
• Establish the Development Coordination Authority (DCA) – a ‘single front door’ for advice and coordination of major projects across NSW government agencies.
• Expand the ‘complying development’ pathway for low-impact projects, ‘enabling faster and more flexible approvals with some ability now to vary specific standards’.
• Introduce a new ‘Targeted Assessment Pathway’ for projects already subject to strategic planning and prior community consultation, aiming to avoid duplicated review. While assessment pathways were described as ‘outdated’, Complying Development pathways will be expanded, says the government, ‘to enable faster approvals for low-impact development’.
• Replace ‘more than 100 consultation plans’ with a state-wide Community Participation Plan.
• Introduce a Transport Oriented Development Program; a Low and Mid-Rise Housing Policy; the Infill Affordable Housing Bonus; a new Renewable Energy Planning Framework; and the Investment Delivery Authority (IDA).
Environmental impact and consent changes
Consent authorities are now required to consider only ‘significant’ impacts of a proposed development, moving the focus away from minor or indirect impacts and adopting a more risk-based and proportionate assessment standard.
Modification powers are expanded: authorities may now modify consents for developments with minimal or no environmental impact, not just for errors or misdescriptions.
A new 14-day determination period for modification applications under section 4.55(1) has been introduced, with defaults if not decided within timeframes.
The Bill also limits use of modification and revocation powers for development consents older than 25 years, transferring some decision-making to the planning secretary.
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