Draft Scheme Ready for State Approval
Moreton Bay Regional Council has completed its review of community feedback to the new draft planning scheme and has now finalised the draft scheme for the approval of the Queensland Government.
Moreton Bay Regional Council Mayor Allan Sutherland said all properly made submissions received during the public consultation period from July 1 to August 21, 2015 had been carefully considered.
“Council will now write to the Deputy Premier seeking her approval to adopt the final version of the draft scheme which incorporates fine-tuning resulting from our community’s feedback,” Mayor Sutherland said.
“This is a significant milestone in the development of a region-wide planning scheme that’s expected to deliver the Moreton Bay Region’s blueprint for sustainable planning and infrastructure delivery over coming years.”
During the consultation period, council received 5,569 properly-made submissions.
76 percent of properly-made submissions were pre-prepared proforma responses related to coastal villages, erosion prone area mapping and storm tide inundation mapping.
There were 361,802 visits to the new draft planning scheme website and 93,061 uses of the online My Property Look Up tool.
1454 people visited council’s planning information kiosks at customer service centres, more than 100 individual information sessions with community members and associations, as well as 1,398 calls to the Planning Advice Line.
Planning and Development spokesperson, Cr Mick Gillam thanked council’s planning staff for their effort in considering the community’s feedback and making adjustments to the draft planning scheme in a timely manner.
“Council has fine-tuned the planning scheme in response to the majority of feedback received from submitters during the consultation period, including amending the designation of Coastal Villages to Coastal Communities to provide more development flexibility in the future,” Cr Gillam said.
“Coastal Villages have been a component of the current Caboolture and Pine Rivers Shire plans for more than a decade.
“Queensland Government approval has also been sought for a fit-for-purpose coastal erosion study to better localise the State’s Erosion Prone Area mapping and would make Moreton Bay the first council in Queensland to compile this type of localised coastal erosion study.”
Mayor Sutherland said council would write to residents and stakeholders who made a properly-made submission on the new draft planning scheme to inform them on how their feedback had helped influence the finalisation of the draft scheme.
“On behalf of Council I want to express my appreciation to those members of our community who have taken the time to provide their feedback and helped to guide the future planning of one of Australia’s fastest growing urban areas,” the Mayor said.
“We’ve used the community’s feedback to finalise a planning scheme that helps to balance our community’s expectations for growth and development while also protecting what we love about our region.” *
