| Today’s announcement by Premier Perrottet of the much-needed investment in enabling infrastructure is both welcome and long overdue according to UDIA NSW.
Steve Mann, CEO, UDIA NSW said, “This $500m investment combined with last week’s announcement on supporting the biodiversity offsets market, will unblock significant development ready land and support the supply of greenfield homes over the next few years. These policies, together with yesterday’s announcement of a shared equity scheme, will go some of the way towards addressing housing affordability in the short term.”
“Now, with significant funding provided to the NSW Department of Planning to accelerate rezonings and approvals, we need to see results quickly, with dwelling approvals down 24% from the supply peak”, said Mr Mann.
Removing the constraints that have been hampering efforts to build the houses that communities need, with the proposed $300m investment to help councils deliver development ready land – (land which has water, sewer, roads, power and biodiversity approvals) together with a focus on speeding up the slow planning system, is a step in the right direction for NSW.
The government’s acknowledgement of the need to build infrastructure in regional communities is supported by UDIA’s Building Blocks 2021 research reports which outline where the enabling infrastructure needs to be delivered in key regional markets including the Hunter, Central Coast and Illawarra Shoalhaven.
The government’s proposed $33.8m investment over four years to address housing supply in regional NSW is consistent with our submission to the regional Housing Taskforce, including the need to provide more certainty about where, when and what types of homes will be built.
A number of our recommendations in UDIAs pre-Budget submission are closely aligned with today’s investment announcement, UDIA also recommends:
- The NSW Government funds $450m worth of state enabling infrastructure over the next 3 years.
- Policy support to get apartment projects under construction, that traditionally account for 60% of supply of new homes in NSW, but remain 43% down from the 2016 peak.
Whilst UDIA applauds the government’s announcement today, improving housing affordability requires a long-term plan for investing in development ready land and improving the slowest planning system in Australia. We need to spend the next two years developing solutions that will enable consistent funding to avoid the feast or famine cycle that we have been in over recent years and a permanent fix for the planning system.
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Media Enquiries:
Deanna Lane 0416 295 898 or dlane@udiansw.com.au. |
