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The NSW Govt has finally released new details about the planning reforms for low and mid rise housing, including some that are already taking effect right now.
At the start of a new financial year and the beginning of the 5-year national target of 1.2 million new dwellings, Stage 1 of the NSW Govt low rise reform has now been implemented with an amendment to the Housing SEPP in force today.
It permits dual occupancies and semi-detached dwellings in R2 Low Density zones across the state, but with a long list of excluded areas. The exclusions relate to flood, bushfire, coastal, ANEF, and pipeline constraints; heritage items; and the TOD SEPP areas.
Importantly, the new permissibility explicitly cannot be used for complying development (CDC), although the NSW Govt says this exclusion will be removed after 1 July 2025. Also, the original proposal included a blanket minimum lot size of 450 sqm for dual occupancies, but this has been cut out of the final implementation.
Currently 15 LEPs prohibit any dual occupancy in R2, including Hawkesbury, Hornsby, Inner West, Ku-ring-gai, Liverpool, Mosman, Strathfield, and Warringah in the Sydney region. Additionally, dual occupancy prohibition clauses exist for specific areas in Parramatta and Canterbury-Bankstown. All these areas will get overriding permissibility for dual occupancies from the Housing SEPP.
What about Stage 2 of the reforms? This would add permissibility and density around many stations and centres across the Sydney-Newcastle-Wollongong region. New details have been provided for this stage as follows:
- Will be announced later in 2024 but will not take effect until 2nd half of 2025 (although 2025 may be a typo on Dept's page?);
- Will identify specific stations and centres where new rules are applicable, but no word on how long this list will be;
- 800m walking distance will remain the outer threshold and will not be mapped, leaving it to proponents and Councils to calculate;
- The proposals only affect residential zones, not centre zones, even where a centre is the basis of the 800m distance.
No changes were stated from the previously exhibited permissibility or height/density proposals.
I am not surprised that the NSW Govt has slowed down this very far-reaching reform. We’ll have to wait until later this year to see what final form it takes and what the impacts are. PropCode’s platform will take account of whatever final rules are gazetted, including our free planning reform lookup which now has the final dual occupancy permissibility changes.