Wilton Growth Area Development Control Plan

UDIA has prepared detailed feedback to DPIE on the draft Wilton Growth Area DCP.  We have significant concerns about the draft document, including inconsistencies with the established development controls for Sydney’s Growth Areas.

UDIA believes that the poor development outcomes that are being cited by government as symbolic of systematic problems with development controls are not symptomatic of a widespread problem with the current approach to development undertaken in Western Sydney and the existing development controls. In some respects we agree with some of the criticisms being made of particular developments. These outcomes are the exception, not the norm.

The DCP that emerged from the Growth Centres Development Code in 2006 is not broken. It only requires finessing to meet evolving circumstances. This is normal and expected. There is no benefit for any stakeholder to have widely different controls for the same house and land products developed by the industry in Western Sydney.

In that context, UDIA does not support major changes to the existing adopted controls in the Growth Centres DCP via the Wilton DCP without prior comprehensive discussion with key stakeholders in the broader relevant areas of NSW.

However the current range and scope of proposed changes to controls in the DCP appear to go beyond incremental change and will impact upon the ability of the industry to efficiently pursue its business activities in Western Sydney.

This in turn has a number of implications:

• The proposals unfairly impact on the majority of the industry operatives that seek to deliver good outcomes and have conceived and progressed products and practices since 2006 that, in good faith, respond to the established planning controls; and
• The proposals will both increase construction costs and reduce dwelling density. We expect that this implication is unintentional. However, by way of example our analysis (described later) suggest that the proposed amendments, through responses by building design / siting and land subdivision design, could add anywhere between $50,000 and $100,000 to the price of a house and land package (primarily through larger lot sizes required and / or the need for two-storey dwellings in order to respond to the proposed new controls).

We are concerned that too much of the responsibility for fulfilling the Western Parkland City’s vision for a green canopy is proposed to be placed on private land (homebuyers, landowners and developers) without the same responsibility being shared by publicly owned and managed land and agencies.

UDIA will continue to work with the NSW Government on improvements to the Wilton DCP.