The Decision Makers
Procedures vary, so check on your Council’s website and/or council’s notification of the meeting.
Who sits on a local planning panel?
The ‘panel’ is made up of a chairperson, two ‘expert’ members (these might be town planners, urban designers, lawyers, environmental experts and so on) and one community member. So four members in total. The panel members are selected by the council with the members rotated between the panel meetings.
How are meetings held?
Some panel meetings are held online, others are held in Council’s chambers and some are ‘hybrid’ (meaning they are held at council but community members are allowed to log on and watch online). Community members can attend in person, or on line.
If it’s an online meeting you should have sound muted and camera turned off. If you have registered to speak, wait until your name is called, at which time you should turn both on and identify yourself. Pick somewhere quiet to speak, without distractions.
If it’s an ‘in person’ meeting you will normally go to a lectern to speak, or a desk/table with a microphone.
Local Panel meetings are recorded and may be live-streamed, with the recording posted online afterwards.
The agenda
Between a few days to a week before the meeting the agenda will usually be published on the council’s website, including the council planner’s assessment report on each item and their recommendation, that is, as to whether the application should be approved or refused.
On the meeting day
Prior to the meeting, panel members will familiarise themselves with the site, either individually or as a group. On the day of the meeting they will generally convene in the morning to receive a briefing on each item from the council officer responsible for preparing the assessment report. The public meeting will usually follow the order of items on the agenda but the chair can decide to run in a different order (eg more simple items might be dealt with first) so it’s important to be there from the start of the meeting. Note that not all items on the agenda will be considered in the public meeting.
The chair will have a list of all objectors who have registered to speak and will call out your name when the item you are interested in is under discussion. Speakers ‘against’ the DA will usually be heard first, followed by representatives of the applicant (this might be the applicant itself, the architect, the town planner or one of the experts on their team). The applicant may take that opportunity to respond to issues raised by objectors.
After each objector has spoken, the panel members might ask questions, for example to understand your concerns better. Occasionally, panel members might return to ask something further of you regarding something raised by the applicant. Once you have finished speaking, however, you do not have the right to ask further questions, either of the panel or of the applicant. You should not interject, call out or comment while the applicant is speaking.
Likewise, after the applicant has spoken the panel members might ask questions. This might be for clarification or perhaps to seek if the applicant would be prepared to accept a condition which resolves a particular concern raised by an objector. The fact a panel member might ask questions as to how problems could be resolved, including by conditions, does not imply that the panel has already decided to approve. It simply covers one variable that may arise in the discussion that will occur later as how the DA will be determined.
Determinations by the Panel
After the public agenda items have been heard the panel will deliberate on how the development application should be dealt with. It might determine to refuse the development, or approve it, or approve it subject to additional conditions or different conditions to those included in the council officer’s recommendation. The panel can support the recommendation in the officer’s report or it can determine against it (eg approve a development that has been recommended for refusal and vice versa). The panel might also defer its determination – for example, if it considers the DA generally has merit but should be amended in a particular way. Reasons will be provided for the determination.
Some panels will deliberate within the ‘public’ part of the meeting, either after each item or at the end of the meeting. Most however, will retire after the ‘public’ part of the meeting and the panel’s determination will be published on Council’s website, usually within a few days of the meeting. The panel chair will explain this in the meeting.
Regional Planning Panels
There are 5 Sydney planning panels and 4 regional planning panels across NSW. The NSW Government provides the administration for the panels, but each panel is an independent body that is not subject to the direction of the Minister for Planning. The panels determine regionally significant development that is larger in investment value, scale and/or complexity including projects with a capital investment value of more than $30 million (or less, if meeting certain criteria), and nominated projects having potential for high environmental impact (such as extractive industries and marinas).
Each panel has at least 3 members: a chair and 2 regular members appointed by the Minister for Planning. Local councils may nominate another 2 members, so there can be five members in total.
The procedures at regional planning panels are similar to those for local planning panels. As an objector to a regionally significant development you (along with the proponent) will be given the opportunity to speak and express your view on the development application.