UDIA NSW offers our strong support to Kiama Municipal Council on the delivery of its Draft Growth and Housing Strategy. We have engaged consistently with Council staff throughout the drafting of the Strategy including through previous correspondence addressed to KMC’s CEO, and through engagement with KMC’s Director of Planning, Environment & Communities via our UDIA Chapter Committees.
Strategic documents like Housing Strategies were designed to align priorities across government, infrastructure delivery agencies, industry, and community. It is invaluable to the Kiama Local Government Area that a precedent is now being set through the Strategy, which starts a real conversation around planning for growth in Kiama.
We appreciate that KMC has invested significant time to prepare a comprehensive, well considered, and collaborative Strategy in what is a relatively short period of time. However, we take the opportunity to express concerns with some elements of the Strategy and suggest opportunities for improvement.
In summary, UDIA recommends:
- Council to work with UDIA to organise a Kiama Developers Forum which would include Council, Industry, and key delivery agencies providing contemporary updates on local planning matters including infrastructure capacity and need.
- Council to work closely with industry to track, monitor and review its quarterly performance against the Growth and Housing Strategy, to ensure tier classifications of sites are kept updated.
- Council to revise the timeframe it has attributed to Bombo Quarry in the Strategy to a 15-20 year delivery window, to more accurately reflect it as a significant opportunity for long-term growth.
- Council to expand the Strategy to include all sites identified in the developer Expressions of Interest that are not fundamentally constrained and can contribute to housing in Kiama within the Housing Accord timeframe.
- Council to incorporate UDIA’s comments in the finalised Strategy.
Our full submission can be found at the download link below: