Housing Delivery Authority

This reform will come into force in early 2025, following a short and sharp consultation with stakeholders.

This will be available for new residential developments with an estimated development cost in excess of $60 million (average of 100 or more homes) in Greater Sydney and approximately $30 million in excess of $30 million (average of 40 or more homes) in regional NSW.

This road will be overseen by the new Housing Delivery Authority (HDA) and will be established under the Department of Planning, Housing and Infrastructure (DPHI).

The HDA will include Department of Premier Secretary Simon Draper, Department of Planning Secretary Kiersten Fishburn and NSW Infrastructure Chief Executive Tom Gellibrand.

The Minister of Planning and Public Spaces retains approval authority for projects through this route.

Housing is the biggest cost of living pressure people are dealing with right now.

Although we have delivered the biggest housing reforms in a generation, there is still a disconnect between the state’s need to support new homes and our ability to deliver this through the current planning system.

Proposals along this route would not need to be assessed by development councils and would benefit from an approval timeline potentially being shortened in years.

Proposals will also be selected through an expression of interest (EOI) process with established criteria. They will be assessed on merit with a flexible approach to planning controls, including any incremental zoning changes required to maintain a development application.

Rezoning process

As part of this reform, the Minns Labor Government is also introducing a new pathway that will deliver significant housing growth but allow selected projects that require more significant rezonings to go through the DPHI-led fast track rezoning, which does not require a council process. .

These projects will also be selected through an Expression of Interest process administered by HDA, where supporters will be able to submit rezoning proposals for consideration.

Proposals will be assessed against a set of criteria that the HDA will now consult with stakeholders and are consistent with the state’s housing priorities.

This approach would have the advantage of allowing new projects to undergo rezoning and development evaluation simultaneously.

These reforms will reduce the number of large complex development applications that councils need to evaluate each year, freeing up resources for councils to evaluate the less complex development applications they have in front of them.

These measures are based on a series of transformative reforms to simplify the planning system and free up housing supply after a decade of inaction by the former government:

• The largest rezoning in NSW history.
• Housing targets for councils to rebalance housing across Greater Sydney.
• $450 million to build new apartments for essential workers, including nurses, paramedics, teachers, allied health care workers, police officers and firefighters.
• A council league table to measure housing distribution.
• It is the largest investment in the state’s history, with $5.1 billion dedicated to providing social and affordable housing.
• Land audit of vacant state-owned land, which will unlock 30,000 homes, including 8,400 public homes built by the government.

New South Wales Premier Chris Minns:

“These are such big reforms that we should not take lightly, but the scale of the problem requires this significant change.

“For over a decade in NSW governments have made it harder, rather than easier, to build the homes we need; But if we want to be a city where young people can afford to live, this cannot continue.

“NSW needs a significant supply of new housing close to existing infrastructure, but at the same time too many well-located sites in Sydney have been too much of a barrier for too long.”

Planning and Public Spaces Minister Paul Scully said:

“The Government of Minn. is doing everything it can to combat the housing crisis and encourage developers to build and increase housing supply and overall affordability.

“These latest reforms mean the State is taking control of major housing projects, so they get the attention they deserve and go through the assessment process much faster.

“The previous government increased the bureaucracy so that it became incredibly difficult to get approval to build houses.

“The NSW Government will do whatever it takes to build a better future for NSW so young people, families and workers have somewhere to live.”