Planning Delivery Unit | NSW
Department of Planning, Industry and Environment - Planning Delivery Unit
The judges acknowledge how much planning process improvement is being undertaken across all the states and predominantly by councils or state agencies.
The NSW Department of Planning, Industry and Environment (DPIE), as part of its ongoing Planning reform processes has tackled this problem head on by establishing the Planning Delivery Unit (PDU) in July 2020. The Unit was established to streamline assessment processes, resolve bottlenecks, improve transparency and coordination, resolve issues between state agencies, and to improve the efficiency of the planning system.
The PDU, located within the Office of the Secretary in the DPIE, was established to be the central point of escalation to unblock planning applications that were ‘stuck’ in the system. The team works with proponents, Local Councils and NSW Government agencies to resolve issues in major development applications, State Significant Developments, planning proposals and precincts so that decisions can be made faster.
The judges considered that the PDU is an innovative approach to managing planning issues in NSW. In particular, the judges were impressed by its customer focus, its emphasis on increasing transparency and its attention on improving both outcomes for individual cases, as well as ongoing planning reform - by gathering ideas on how to improve the planning system across all agencies.
The PDU engaged with 128 Local Councils to identify resources and capacity-building issues to help clear the backlog of local DAs. Further, the judges concluded that the PDU have had a significant impact - supporting over 416 projects worth a combined capital investment value of over $57 bill to the NSW economy. In these COVID times this planning process improvement was seen as a significant contribution to the economy.