Draft City Centre Local Infrastructure Contributions Plan - Amendment No. 3 (Church Street North)

On Monday 27 May 2024, Council adopted the Parramatta City Centre Local Infrastructure Contributions Plan (Amendment No 3). Please refer to the Council Minutes (Item 13.4).

Background

Public exhibition closed at 5pm on Friday 19 April 2024. Thank you for your feedback.

The purpose of the exhibition was to update the Land Application Map. Council is proposing to apply higher percentage rates to land in the Church Street North Precinct – being land within the Parramatta City Centre located north of the Parramatta River along the Church Street spine. The extent of the Church Street North Precinct is shown coloured blue on the following map:

It will do this by removing the Church Street North Precinct from land identified as "Area A" on the Land Application Map and introduce a new “Area B”. This change is shown on the “Proposed” map.

Maps with the current contribution area and the proposed contribution area can be found in Frequently Asked Questions and downloaded from Resources.

The amendment was necessary because of recent changes to Planning controls brought in by the State Government to land in the Church Street North Precinct. These changes increase the height of buildings and floor space ratio controls for that area and come into effect on 1 July 2024. The changes to the controls are anticipated to provide capacity for an additional 1,800 dwellings which, in turn, create additional demands for Council to provide local infrastructure such as parks and open space, community and childcare facilities, recreation facilities, and improvements to the public domain.

Theexhibition wasrequired under the Environmental Planning and Assessment Regulation 2021 as it amends an existing contributions plan.

Background

In July 2021, Council prepared and endorsed a new local infrastructure contributions plan for the Parramatta City Centre. This endorsed plan included higher percentage rates for land within the Parramatta City Centre.

Before coming into effect, this plan was reviewed in June 2022 at the request of the Minister for Planning. This amendment re-applied the existing 3% rates for land within the City Centre that was excluded or effectively deferred from the Parramatta CBD Planning Proposal at various stages of the process.

Land that was excluded or deferred applied to:

• land north of the Parramatta River;
• land at the Phillip Street block - being land generally bounded by Phillip Street, Smith Street, the Parramatta River and Charles Street;
• land within the Parramatta Park Edge Highly Sensitive Area;
• land in the western vicinity of Auto Alley.

This land is shown on the current Figure 2 Land Application Map coloured orange and noted as "Area A". The remainder of the City Centre continued to adopt the higher percentage rates.

The final plan came into effect on 14 October 2022 at the same time as the commencement of Amendment 56 to Parramatta Local Environmental Plan 2011.

On 15 December 2023, the Department published the State Environmental Planning Policy (Church Street North Precinct) 2023, which, amongst other matters, increased the development potential in the Church Street North Precinct with new Height of Buildings and Floor Space Ratio controls. These changes will come into effect on 1 July 2024.

As a result, Council is proposing to amend the contributions plan to apply the higher percentage rates to future development within the Church Street North Precinct to address the additional demands for local infrastructure from an additional 1,800 dwellings that could be constructed in that area.

The proposed changes

The draft contributions plan intends to make the following amendments:

• Remove the Church Street North Precinct from “Area A”
• Apply a new “Area B” for the Church Street North Precinct
• Apply percentage contributions rates as per the following table:

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This will mean development in the Church Street North Precinct pays a 4% levy for residential accommodation or mixed-use development containing residential accommodation instead of the current 3% levy. Other development that does not include residential accommodation continues to pay the 3% levy.

Amendments to s209 of the Environmental Planning and Assessment Regulation 2021

Section 209 of the Environmental Planning and Assessment Regulation will need to be amended before Council can apply the new rates to the Church Street North Precinct. Separate approval of the Department of Planning Housing and Infrastructure (the Department) will be required and will be sought after Council approves the final contributions plan.

Relationship to draft Amendment 2 of the Parramatta City Centre Local Infrastructure Contributions Plan 2022

A separate “housekeeping” amendment is progressing to the City Centre contributions plan, which concluded exhibition on 1 March 2024. This proposed amendment does not impact any proposed changes to the contributions plan made by draft Amendment 2.

For the purposes of public exhibition, this plan incorporates the changes under Amendment 2 as if they had been approved and adopted. If any changes to Amendment 2 take place post-exhibition, the draft contributions plan will be updated consequentially to be consistent with the final version of Amendment 2.

For more details about Amendment 2, refer to the following page on the Participate Parramatta portal:CLICK HERE

To learn more, read our Frequently Asked Questions.