A COURT decision to overturn the rezoning of the $1.5billion Huntlee site has ‘‘major ramifications’’ for the state’s planning system with potential effects for housing affordability.
The Department of Planning has made that assessment, ahead of an appeal lodged by Huntlee Pty Ltd for the proponent LWP Property, which is expected to be heard in November.
The implications extend beyond the fate of the Huntlee development, the department says.
The NSW Land and Environment Court overturned in July the project’s state significant site status and rezoning for more than 7000 homes that was gazetted in December last year under the former Labor government.
The Sweetwater Action Group mounted the case against the Planning minister and the developer.
Justice Peter Biscoe found former planning minister Tony Kelly had not properly considered the need for remediation work on some of the site and its suitability for uses once rezoned.
As well, Mr Kelly should not have heeded a voluntary planning agreement for the development, in which the proponents agreed to transfer more than 5000 hectares of conservation offset lands and $1.1million to manage the lands to the government.
The court said the payment was unenforceable.
A Department spokesman said the decision had ‘‘major ramifications’’.
‘‘These issues relate to the nature and extent of security that must be provided by developers as part of a voluntary planning agreement for a rezoning,’’ he said.
It also called into question procedures and the extent of the considerations that must take place before authorities could rezone land.
‘‘As a result the [court’s] decision may have flow-on impacts to the cost of releasing land for housing and employment, and ultimately housing affordability,’’ the spokesman said.
The Minister for Planning was automatically joined to the appeal, but the government was ‘‘limiting its involvement in the case to legal points that raise those broader issues’’
Planners previously ranked Huntlee last out of 91 Lower Hunter sites as suitable for housing.
MP sees no bar to homes project
CESSNOCK Labor MP Clayton Barr is backing the $1.5billion Huntlee project as an opportunity to put an end to the ‘‘gradual sprawl’’ of housing and to deliver infrastructure needed near Branxton.
It is despite planners ranking the project in the past as the least suitable out of 91 sites.
Mr Barr, who was elected to Parliament in March, said he had met Huntlee’s developer twice before a court decision in July to overturn the site’s rezoning.
The decision is subject to appeal. It is the second time the Sweetwater Action Group has successfully challenged the rezoning.
Mr Barr said he found the project proposal in principle ‘‘a very good one’’.
‘‘I have watched with interest while Huntlee was originally blocked by a small minority group and is now being given new life by a ground swell of local support.’’
Mr Barr’s comments echo those of the new Friends of Huntlee group, which is described as including local business groups and residents.
Huntlee was included in the 2006 Lower Hunter Regional Strategy, despite objections from the then Planning Department’s Hunter director that the government was making ‘‘massive concessions’’ to developers.
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