UDIA comments on Central Coast Regional Strategy

“It’s been a long wait but worth it,” said, Central Coast Chairman, David Kettle.
“The Strategy maintains the basic goals of the original Gosford-Wyong Structure Plan, which was approved by the late Minister for Planning, Paul Landa, thirty years ago, by continuing to seek a balance between future development and environmental management of the Region’s significant natural resources and scenic attributes.

“During the past 30 years this policy has seen the Central Coast double in population from about 150,000 to 300,000 people while at the same time maintaining inter-connected communities separated by rural lands and the green backdrops of our coastal, ridgeland and wetland open spaces”.

Mr Kettle said that as the construction industry is one of the major sources of employment on the Central Coast, the UDIA welcomes the future increase in population over the next 25 years of 100,000 people. “Over the past 30 years no encouragement has been needed for people to move to the Central Coast to live. However, the greatest challenges have been to encourage employment to follow and for Governments to keep pace with infrastructure requirements. These same challenges are recognised in the new Strategy and will be the key to the future success of achieving a relatively self-contained region,” Mr Kettle said.

The Strategy sets the framework for future actions. The responsibilities for implementing those actions lie with all three levels of Government. The principal responsibility for implementing the Regional Strategy will be with Local Government. Both Gosford City Council and Wyong Shire Council need to take proactive roles in ensuring:
• that adequate and suitable lands are zoned for the range of economic development required for employment generation;
• that suitable lands are available for future residential development close to existing centres and transport routes; and
• that areas of significant environmental and scenic quality are adequately protected.

Mr Kettle said that as a first step UDIA urges Gosford City Council to withdraw its draft City-wide Local Environmental Plan (LEP) from the Department of Planning and to prepare a new draft plan that fully takes into account the increased population and employment requirements of the new Strategy. “Without taking such urgent action the current draft plan is a meaningless document. The current Council should take the initiative now so that the new Council elected in September will have responsibility and ownership for adopting and implementing the future LEP for the City.”

Meanwhile, in Wyong Shire, action is needed jointly by Council and the State Government to complete planning for the Warnervale Town Centre, the Wyong Employment Zone (WEZ) and the North Wyong Shire Structure Plan. These projects are central to the future planning and development of the Shire. In particular the WEZ project needs to be further considered to ensure that its main role is for employment generation with viable servicing and development costs to ensure that it can compete with other employment areas in the State and interstate.

“The principal strength of the Central Coast economy is its diversity of small and medium size businesses often owned and managed by local families,” said Mr Kettle. This strength has, to a large degree, buffered the local economy from major employment losses such as seen in other areas of the State, where they have been dependent on a few large industries and employers.

Local government needs to ensure that the wide diversity of small to medium-size employment is maintained and enhanced by zoning adequate lands to provide for future employment generation. This can involve the full range of employment from small scale start-up businesses at home to larger companies that locate in the major industrial estates.

Mr Kettle said, “The State Government has an important role to maintain the impetus in implementing the Regional Strategy. This needs to be achieved by ensuring that adequate funding is provided for the full range of infrastructure projects for which it is responsible, as regional population growth proceeds. It also has a key role in ensuring that development proceeds in a timely and cost-effective manner to meet the population growth and employment targets that it has established.”

At the Federal level the Regional Development Australia program recently announced by the Federal Minister for Infrastructure, Transport, Regional Development and Local Government could play an important role in providing funding for infrastructure in the Region. Our Federal Members of Parliament have a key role in unlocking part of the Government’s $20 billion surplus to be spent on local infrastructure projects, particularly roads, which everyone agrees have been sadly neglected during the past 30 years of growth.

The UDIA urges the Minister for Planning to establish a Regional Infrastructure Working Group with Federal, State, Local and Development Industry representatives to review current infrastructure levies and Section 94 Contributions Plans. The main purpose of the Working Group would be to ensure that future development levies are focussed on the provision of essential local facilities in a fair and equitable manner that will facilitate the continuing development of the Region, as set out in the Regional Strategy.

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