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The state’s government has confirmed that its previously “under the radar” Housing Taskforce, designed to resolve delays in development approvals, will now become a permanent fixture of the NSW planning system.
Since the initial launch of the taskforce as a pilot scheme in September 2024, the NSW government said the department has managed to unlock over 13,000 homes by streamlining development approvals (DAs) and cutting through the logistical roadblocks preventing the delivery of housing supply.
In addition to accelerating pre-determination approvals, the state government noted that the taskforce is also working to speed up post-determination approvals to ensure that projects can move from the approved to commence stage faster.
Commenting on the announcement, NSW Minister for Planning and Public Spaces, Paul Scully, shared he was “pleased to say the Housing Taskforce will become a permanent fixture of the NSW planning system”.
The taskforce is composed of staff from multiple NSW government agencies and departments who have been brought together to systematically address problems in development applications which have been clogged in the system.
Speaking on the need for the initiative, Minister Scully said that “this taskforce is about having representatives from state agencies, vital to planning approvals, under one roof to make it easier to consider all of the issues for a particular site in a coordinated way”.
In 2023, the NSW government stated that 9,772 applications valued at over $22 billion required advice or approvals from a government agency, with over 1,900 of these requiring advice or approvals from more than one agency.
Before these development applications can be approved by a council or issued with a construction certificate, additional state government agencies may also need to assess the potential impacts of a project on the surrounding environment, such as traffic and bushfire risks, and the impacts on an area’s heritage, biodiversity or water supply.
These assessments frequently face delays due to conflicting requirements from different departments and the challenges around making requests for additional information which result in slower approval timelines, and reduce the number of homes being built.
Weighing in on these logistical barriers, Minister Scully emphasised that communities don’t want to hear that two government agencies can’t see eye-to-eye on a housing development.
“They want to see homes built with the minimum of fuss, and with this taskforce we are one step closer to that,” he said.
Noting that the Housing Taskforce has so far focused on “streamlining and coordinating” the assessment of housing development applications, the new department’s work includes:
- Unlocking the approval of a housing development in the Greater Newcastle area that had been in the system for 865 days, in just a single week by working with Heritage NSW to obtain additional information for an assessment.
- Resolving an issue for a residential building in the Sydney CBD by obtaining required approval from Sydney Metro to proceed to construction, enabling the project to avoid delays to the start of construction.
- Issuing an approval within one day to ensure that statutory time frames are met for a large housing development in the Upper Hunter region by working closely with Heritage NSW to obtain the necessary information and resolve heritage based concerns.
As a result of the success of the taskforce over the year, the NSW government also confirmed that it is currently examining how the program can be further expanded moving into the future.
The announcement of the new Housing Taskforce was welcomed by the Property Council of Australia, with the peak body’s NSW executive director, Katie Stevenson, praising the initiative as a “positive and significant step towards meeting NSW’s critical housing supply targets”.
After recently highlighting that NSW recorded the lowest month for dwelling approvals since January 2023 in September of this year, Stevenson said that the continuing work of the now permanent team would help to create a “more efficient and responsive planning system”.
While the director described the Taskforce as a “big win for the industry and a vital move to address housing availability and affordability”, she nonetheless emphasised that continued action would be needed to drive “lasting improvement in housing delivery”.
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