Today at its Annual Western Sydney Lunch, UDIA NSW launched a Paper on the Urban Development Program which calls on the NSW Government and the Opposition to complete the Infrastructure Contributions Reform package developed from the Productivity Commission’s 2021 White Paper. The desire of the NSW Government to improve the supply of new homes to tackle the housing supply and affordability crisis in NSW, combined with the draft Infrastructure Contributions Reform package, creates a window of opportunity to greatly improve the alignment of state and local infrastructure delivery with planning. UDIA has spent two years working with the NSW Productivity Commission identifying that development planning and regional enabling infrastructure delivery was one of the most important areas to improve productivity in NSW, culminating in the 2021 White Paper. The UDIA Paper released today which can be found here, shows that empowered Urban Development Program Committees for each region will be a game changer in the way that NSW plans and delivers its growth. “The success of the committees will be in having the right membership of government, infrastructure providers and industry working together in each region to prioritise projects, with a governance model as part of the Infrastructure Contributions reform package which would recommend spending of Regional Infrastructure Contributions reporting to a Cabinet Infrastructure Committee and co-ordinate agency and consolidated revenue allocations,” said Steve Mann, CEO, UDIA NSW. “In addition, the use of the right data and proven digital tools for rapid business cases assessment, will result in significantly reducing the housing supply and employment lands bottlenecks caused by a lack of enabling infrastructure,” he added.UDIA has been working on these issues for the past four years and has invested in two pilot studies to test a UDP Committee concept for collaboration across stakeholders to prioritise infrastructure and land use.The Pilots provided the foundations for a model to successfully align infrastructure delivery and land use in NSW cities. We proved how 3D city planning tools could make the planning process better, faster and cheaper through the use of a UDP. This led to the Department of Planning & Environment using our data and learnings in the creation of the Greater Sydney UDP and online dashboard.NSW is in desperate need to create more development ready land so that houses can be built, with major regional infrastructure needing to be completed for water, sewer, power and roads.“We must get every available infrastructure dollar invested into the best projects as quickly as we can, so that local communities get the infrastructure they have been promised with growth. UDIA has shown that there is over $3Bn of developer contributions held by Councils in the Sydney Megaregion and these funds could be deployed more quickly with greater integration of State and local investment,” said Mr Mann.UDIA strongly recommends that the Infrastructure Contributions Reform Package be completed so that the analysis by the Productivity Commission and the good work done by the Department of Planning is activated and we can work toward tackling the deep housing supply and affordability crisis in NSW.
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Media Enquiries:Deanna Lane 0416 295 898 or dlane@udiansw.com.au.