The NSW Land and Environment Court has been given extra resources as part of the State Government’s ongoing Covid-19 planning reforms.
As well as the appointment of two more commissioners to enable more cases to be heard, the court’s role has been broadened with the establishment of a new class of appeals “to help unblock the planning system”.
Other initiatives under the NSW Planning Reform Action Plan announced this week include implementing the next phase of the ePlanning Program, a reduction in applications requiring agency concurrences and referrals, and new benchmark timeframes on key assessment and planning functions.
Almost $10 million has been invested on enhance the ePlanning platform, which will “ensure all councils can get online to process DAs more quickly and transparently slash DA processing times by more than half”.
All NSW councils will have to adopt the online system by 1 July 2021.