Posted on September 28, 2022 by Lindsay Taylor and Megan Hawley
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Infrastructure Reforms Shelved
We previously published an article about the introduction of the Environmental Planning and Assessment Amendment (Infrastructure Contributions) Bill 2021 (‘Bill‘) to the Legislative Assembly on 22 June 2021. The Bill proposed to rewrite the NSW infrastructure contributions system under Part 7 of the Environmental Planning and Assessment Act 1979 (NSW) by introducing the following key changes to the development contributions regime:
- introducing a new land value contribution condition in section 7.11,
- replacing the flat percentage levy in section 7.12 with a monetary levy required by a local levy condition, and
- replacing Subdivisions 4 and 5 of Part 7, currently providing for special infrastructure contributions, with new subdivisions providing for regional infrastructure contributions.
The Bill was passed by the Legislative Assembly on 12 October 2021.
Reports today in the Sydney Morning Herald suggest that in response to concerns expressed by councils, the Government will no longer pursue the Bill.
As of the date of this article, there has been no official statement by the Government in this respect, although the Minister for Planning made a statement about continuing to work with councils in respect of infrastructure reform.
It is also unclear from the press report whether the reforms to replace special infrastructure contributions with regional infrastructure contributions will be abandoned.
We will monitor the situation and provide further updates.
You can read our previous blog on the Bill and the proposed reforms via this link.
You can read the Sydney Morning Herald report via this link.
If you have any questions about this blog post, please contact Dr Lindsay Taylor on 02 8235 9701 or Megan Hawley on 02 8235 9703.
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