A New Planning Regime For Queensland

Despite the many submissions made by industry and stakeholders, the Sustainable Planning Act 2009 was passed on 16 September with minimal changes to the Bill in its original form.

There is only one minor amendment to the Bill that is worthy of note. This amendment is the correction of the section relating to making changes to a development application in response to information requests. In the Bill as originally proposed, the ability to make changes in response to an information request was limited to changes made during or after public notification. This was logically impossible, given that public notification could only begin once all responses to information requests were provided. The amendment removes the time constraints on making changes in response to information requests and submissions, therefore resolving this difficulty.