FAQs

A planning agreement is a voluntary agreement or other arrangement between a planning authority (e.g a council) and a developer, who is seeking a change to a Local Environmental Plan (LEP) or is making a development application (DA) or application for a complying development certificate (CDC), under which the developer is required to:

• Dedicate land free of cost;
• Pay a monetary contribution;
• Provide any other material benefit; or
• Provide a combination of the above, to be used for or applied towards a public purpose.

A local planning agreement is negotiated between a developer and a council, for the provision of infrastructure to support the local community. In the context of Randwick City, planning agreements have provided a means of achieving tailored development outcomes and focused public benefits, more flexible infrastructure funding opportunities and better planning implementation.

Council’s Planning Agreements Policy 2024 has been created to supercede Council’s existing Planning Agreements Policy that has been in force since September 2007. The new policy is consistent with the recently released Planning Agreement Practice Notes 2021 by the Department of Planning and Environment and incorporates these revisions and changes.

The Planning Agreements Policy seeks to provide the criteria, principles and steps in preparing Planning Agreements that are efficient, fair, transparent and accountable. The policy aims to provide development proponents and the community with an understanding of the procedures which will be applied by Council in the negotiation, preparation and administration of Planning agreements and provide certainty for the community, developers and Council with respect to infrastructure and development outcomes.

The key changes to the Draft Planning Agreements Policy include:

• Added objectives for the intended use of the policy, including Council’s dealings with developers, public confidence and the need to limit Council’s financial risk when entering into planning agreements;
• Alignment with the state, district and local strategic planning framework;
• Alignment with the Council’s integrated planning framework in terms of planned local infrastructure works and public facilities;
• Removing references to value capture (to remove perception that planning decisions could be made on the basis of a planning agreement);
• Additional purposes for Council’s Planning Agreements such as allowing the payment of monetary contributions at various stages of the development;
• Additional fundamental principles including promoting public confidence and transparency when dealing with planning agreements;
• An assessment framework to determine whether a planning agreement is acceptable for Council to enter into;
• Council’s costs for registering and removing the Planning Agreement from title as a cost to be borne by the developer;
• Clarification on the types of public purposes that Council will seek to cover in their planning agreements;
• Additional forms of security that Council may wish to consider with respect to different development contributions;
• Expansion of probity practices that Council will adopt in relation to planning agreements to ensure Council’s obligations to the public are satisfied.