Lake Macquarie City Council


Media Archive / Lake Macquarie City Council

Lake Macquarie City Council

UDIA has regular stakeholder engagement meeting with all our local councils. Interested members are encouraged to contact Elizabeth York at eyork@udiansw.com.au to be included in future meetings.

Lake Macquarie City Council

UDIA met with Glenn Bunny, Wesley Hain, Elizabeth Lambert and Tim Browne on 12 August.

  • Customer service: Glenn Bunny emphasised that LMCC wants to improve its developer customer processes and assist in unlocking constraints. He encouraged members to bring individual problems to him and/or Liz Lambert.
  • Infrastructure delivery: With UDIA’s assistance, LMCC have mapped out the next 4-5 years of a rolling delivery program for s7.11 infrastructure. They are now designing an end-to-end process plan to track collection of contributions and integrate delivery into their capital works program.
  • LMCC local UDP: an update will be released soon.
  • DA assessment: applications are on par from last year and assessment timeframes are all below KPIs except for “fast track” DAs which are running a few days over. LMCC is expecting 2,590 dwellings to be approved by the end of the year.
  • Planning Portal: all LMCC applications will be lodged via the Planning Portal by the end of the year. LMCC working on integration with their platform, which isn’t yet working seamlessly. In the meantime, LMCC have put in place an active manual work-around to ensure that no responses are lost. UDIA is working with DPIE on fine-tuning ePlanning and has passed on this feedback.
  • Accelerated Assessment: LMCC has signed up to DPIE’s council-led acceleration program and intends to apply it to planning proposals and DAs. DPIE is currently working through governance issues before full application of the program.
  • Affordable Housing policy: exhibition is expected in September or October. One aspect of the draft considers reducing local contributions where affordable and social housing is delivered.
  • Accessible Housing: LMCC would like to engage with developers who have experience providing accessible housing for people with disability/low mobility. Contact Wes Hain.
  • Biodiversity policy review: a comprehensive review of LMCC biodiversity policy will be undertaken over the next 18 months. LMCC will engage with UDIA in that process.
  • Urban Greening / Urban Forest strategy: a working group has been established to develop a draft this financial year. UDIA has 2 representatives on the working group.
  • VibrantScene: LMCC is piloting its VibrantScene program designed to support hospitality businesses within Lake Mac, allowing businesses to use Council-owned land to enable them to serve more customers safely. Learn more
  • Fibre City: The LMCC Fibre City project is installing infrastructure for uncontested business grade broadband and is interested to speak with residential developers about its application for new development. Contact Dan Hughes at djhughes@lakemac.nsw.gov.au.