The New South Wales Government has revealed that its new Housing Taskforce has already unlocked more than 13,000 homes by resolving development delays.
The Housing Taskforce was established in September 2024 as a pilot scheme initially, to tackle post consent requirements where developments are bogged down in a part of the planning system that has historically had no oversight and has become increasingly complex.
The Taskforce brings together staff from multiple New South Wales Government agencies and departments seconded into the same office in Parramatta to go line by line through projects clogged in the system while solving problems to unblock applications.
In 2023, 9,772 applications worth over $22 billion required advice or approvals from a government agency and over 1,900 of those development applications (DAs) required advice or approvals from more than one agency.
Additionally, prior to a DA being approved by council or a construction certificate being issued, other New South Wales Government agencies sometimes need to assess a range of impacts that a development may have on the surrounding environment, such as traffic, bushfire risks, biodiversity, water or heritage.
These assessments often get bogged down between conflicting department requirements and requests for additional information, which can cause long delays in the planning process, resulting in slower approvals and ultimately fewer homes being built.
To date the Housing Taskforce has been focused on streamlining and coordinating the assessment of housing development applications, some other examples include:
- Unblocking the approval for a housing development in the Greater Newcastle area that had been in the system for 865 days. The taskforce worked with Heritage NSW to obtain the additional information required to complete the assessment. The case was closed within a week.
- Resolving an issue for a residential building in the Sydney CBD that required approval from Sydney Metro to proceed to construction. The taskforce was able to work with Sydney Metro to issue its approval avoiding delays to the start of construction.
- Issuing an approval within one day to ensure statutory timeframes were met for a large housing development in the Upper Hunter Region. The taskforce and Heritage NSW worked closely with the applicant to resolve Heritage issues and get the information that was needed.
Following the success of the taskforce, the State Government will be continuing this while looking to the future and examining how this program can be expanded.
The taskforce is not only speeding up pre-determination approvals but also post-determination approvals, meaning more homes can move from the approved to commenced stage faster.
New South Wales Minister for Planning and Public Spaces, Paul Scully, said that given the success of the pilot, the Housing Taskforce will become a permanent fixture of the New South Wales planning system.
“We want every stage of the planning system, pre-lodgement, assessment and post-consent, to be working as effectively and efficiently as possible to deliver more homes and jobs, faster,” Minister Scully said.
“Communities don’t want to hear that two government agencies can’t see eye-to-eye on a housing development. They want to see homes being built with the minimum of fuss, and with this taskforce we are one step closer to that.
“This taskforce is about having representatives from state agencies, vital to planning approvals, under one roof to make it easier to consider all of the issues for a particular site in a coordinated way.”
