Development control needs root and branch rethink

The ink is barely dry on the Minister’s approval of the Development Control Plan (DCP), and the Local Planning Panel is already calling for a review of its provisions (“Panel recommends strategic planning review”, PN559).

For those of us who have been saying from the start that the DCP is arbitrary, inconsistent and inappropriate, it is gratifying to have an official body agreeing in that judgement.

But it is depressing that years have been spent on this futile exercise, and we have nothing more fit for purpose than this hodgepodge of illinformed prejudice and ineffective restrictions.

There was never any attempt to make a proper review of the old DCP: the new one was just cobbled up out of the bits and pieces of the old Gosford and Wyong documents which were acknowledged by everybody to be useless and which were consistently breached by the Council itself in approving nonconforming developments.

It is not surprising that the brandnew DCP has made absolutely no difference to the number of applications for non-conforming developments.

This is because there is no logical basis for any of the DCP standards, so any developer is entitled to put forward his own suggestions as to what is appropriate.

It is also not surprising that