Councillor Don Palmer Providing Local Leadership & Working for You

New Developments Down 10 % the Eastern Courier is telling us in the eastern suburbs. Whilst the report focused on the Norwood, Payneham & St Peters Council it did reference what has occurred in Unley.

The report indeed incorrectly claims that Unley Council development applications are down from 918 in 2102 to 614 in 2013. If true that is a whopping reduction of some 30%
To put the record straight. The annual Development assessment panel report was provided to Council back in October last year and the stats shown therein show approvals down from 958 in 2011-12 to 840 in 2012-13. A significant drop but nowhere near of the order suggested in the Courier. It was more in keeping the the headline for the storey.
Of significance to me, as a member of the Panel, is that the applications before the Panel reduced from 164 (17% of all applications) to 108 (13%). This came about because of changes to criteria Council made to bring back us back in line with similar sized councils when we found we were spending more ratepayers funds than these councils.
Backing up the decision to do this and take pressure off future rate rises the report indicates that 89% and 88% respectively of approvals required by the panel, the panel concurred with the officers recommendation.
It also decried, as I reported last year in this blog site, that only 14 applicants felt a need to lodge an appeal with the ERD Court, making a mockery (in our case anyway) of the Minister for Planning suggesting that approvals should be taken away from Councils and indeed elected members because of bias.

For more information check the posts around September through November.