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THE state government is moving to bypass councils and rezone sites nominated by developers as suitable for tens of thousands of new houses in a radical attempt to increase home building in Sydney.
With Sydney building barely two-thirds of the 25,000 homes needed each year, the government has invited land owners to nominate land suitable for housing and has established a committee, run by the Premier's Department, to assess 43 proposals from developers.
A schedule of ''land owner nominated sites'', published on the Planning Department's website, identifies more than 12,000 hectares of property, mainly on Sydney's fringe, enough land for more than 100,000 homes.
Advertisement: Story continues below Many sites are outside the north-west and south-west growth centres where the former government concentrated new housing, a strategy that had failed, the Minister for Planning, Brad Hazzard, said.
''The lines on the maps for the growth centres are supposed to encourage development in those areas, but it has not worked and the corollary has been it deterred development outside these lines,'' Mr Hazzard said.
The government was determined to boost the number of houses built to bring down prices, he said.
With new home construction at a 50-year low, it made sense to ask developers where they wanted to build, Mr Hazzard said, although he agreed the move had risks. ''The challenge is to have an independent process at arm's length from political influence,'' he said.
A committee of government department heads chaired by the director-general of the Premier's Department has been told to find sites suitable for urban development that could produce housing in the next three years ''at no additional cost to government''.
Agencies such as Sydney Water may be required to reprioritise capital works, or developers may need to build infrastructure themselves, to meet the no-additional-cost requirement.
Mr Hazzard said he wanted councils to co-operate, but the government would make the final decision.
''The desirable course is to work with councils, but at the end of the day the state government and I, as Planning Minister, have the capacity to rezone without their concurrence,'' he said.
Many of the 18 affected councils are unaware of the process.
The general manager of Wollondilly Shire Council, Les McMahon, said developers had proposed 10 sites covering more than 4000 hectares for rezoning. Only three of the sites are in the council's new growth strategy.
''Under our growth strategy we would get 10,000 more sites [houses] over 20 years … This proposal increases that by another 26,000 [houses],'' Mr McMahon said.
He sympathised with the government's desire for more housing but was concerned about the impact of more housing with no new jobs.
''If the government wants to make that decision, to have employment and residential lands, that's fine. But we don't want just residential,'' he said.
The chief executive of a developer lobby group, the Urban Development Institute of Australia, Stephen Albin, hailed the new scheme as ''a victory for common sense''.
''Rather than drafting wish-lists and plans that are not necessarily achievable, they have gone straight to developers, and the land owners have responded in droves,'' he said.
''This will be a stimulus, it will stimulate housing in the short term and fix up the massive supply problems in NSW for the last decade or so.''
With Sydney building barely two-thirds of the 25,000 homes needed each year, the government has invited land owners to nominate land suitable for housing and has established a committee, run by the Premier's Department, to assess 43 proposals from developers.
A schedule of ''land owner nominated sites'', published on the Planning Department's website, identifies more than 12,000 hectares of property, mainly on Sydney's fringe, enough land for more than 100,000 homes.
Advertisement: Story continues below Many sites are outside the north-west and south-west growth centres where the former government concentrated new housing, a strategy that had failed, the Minister for Planning, Brad Hazzard, said.
''The lines on the maps for the growth centres are supposed to encourage development in those areas, but it has not worked and the corollary has been it deterred development outside these lines,'' Mr Hazzard said.
The government was determined to boost the number of houses built to bring down prices, he said.
With new home construction at a 50-year low, it made sense to ask developers where they wanted to build, Mr Hazzard said, although he agreed the move had risks. ''The challenge is to have an independent process at arm's length from political influence,'' he said.
A committee of government department heads chaired by the director-general of the Premier's Department has been told to find sites suitable for urban development that could produce housing in the next three years ''at no additional cost to government''.
Agencies such as Sydney Water may be required to reprioritise capital works, or developers may need to build infrastructure themselves, to meet the no-additional-cost requirement.
Mr Hazzard said he wanted councils to co-operate, but the government would make the final decision.
''The desirable course is to work with councils, but at the end of the day the state government and I, as Planning Minister, have the capacity to rezone without their concurrence,'' he said.
Many of the 18 affected councils are unaware of the process.
The general manager of Wollondilly Shire Council, Les McMahon, said developers had proposed 10 sites covering more than 4000 hectares for rezoning. Only three of the sites are in the council's new growth strategy.
''Under our growth strategy we would get 10,000 more sites [houses] over 20 years … This proposal increases that by another 26,000 [houses],'' Mr McMahon said.
He sympathised with the government's desire for more housing but was concerned about the impact of more housing with no new jobs.
''If the government wants to make that decision, to have employment and residential lands, that's fine. But we don't want just residential,'' he said.
The chief executive of a developer lobby group, the Urban Development Institute of Australia, Stephen Albin, hailed the new scheme as ''a victory for common sense''.
''Rather than drafting wish-lists and plans that are not necessarily achievable, they have gone straight to developers, and the land owners have responded in droves,'' he said.
''This will be a stimulus, it will stimulate housing in the short term and fix up the massive supply problems in NSW for the last decade or so.''
