A new planning scheme takes a lot of effort to create. It is not simply a matter of writing assessment provisions and preparing some mapping. The process is a long and sometimes tortuous one. It involves research, consulting stakeholders, developing policy, consulting again, preparing strategies, drafting scheme provisions, testing, consulting yet again, negotiating changes and obtaining State approval, reviewing provisions, public notification, a second State approval, gazettal and finally publication.
Collaboration
"Drafting the scheme provisions is probably the easy part of the process" says David Newby, InsiteSJC Partner and the Project Manager for the scheme. "...it's collaborating with the wide range of stakeholders, trying to define exactly what outcomes we are trying to achieve that is the real challenge."
InsiteSJC therefore congratulates the many people who have been involved throughout. We hope that it achieves a good balance between the interests of all. Certainly, one of the key objectives was to facilitate good economic development in the North Burnett. The region has many opportunities and the intention of the scheme is to enable those to be realised with the minimum of bureaucracy. The approach is to regulate as little as possible and as much as necessary. Overall, the scheme reduces the amount of planning regulation in the North Burnett. In terms of its size, the new scheme contains about as many pages as just one of the six IPA schemes that precede it.
Relationship to regional plan and State Planning Policy
The Minister has approved the planning scheme as integrating all of the States interests from the regional plan and the SPP. That means that there is no need to refer to those other documents any longer...all provisions are in the planning scheme.
The scheme is also one of the first in the State to use the SPP interactive mapping directly. Rather than copying the State's mapping and republishing it as part of the scheme overlay mapping, the scheme simply links to it. This will be a considerable cost saving for Council and will ensure that the mapping is more current.
North Burnett Regional Council has certainly been an excellent client to work with on this project and InsiteSJC commends its vision, patience and effort.
Commencement
The planning scheme commences on Monday 3 November 2014. A copy is available from the North Burnett Regional Council website at http://www.northburnett.qld.gov.au/?id=21