Preschool approvals dismantle planning process
Once again, I am writing to alert our community to changes in state planning law that significantly reduces our say on new preschools being built on public school grounds.
The changes go further than I had imagined.
The November 2024 amendment to the State Environmental Planning Policy (Transport and Infra-structure) 2021 effectively grants the NSW Department of Education unprecedented powers to self-assess and approve these developments, bypassing the traditional development application process administered by local councils.
The fact that such a significant change to planning law has been largely ignored by the mainstream media is baffling and concerning.
The government claims this will "cut red tape" and speed up delivery.
What it really cuts is the community's right to a fair and transparent process.
For years, the development application process has been our community's guarantee of having a voice.
It ensured that an independent body, our local council, assessed projects against local planning controls that protect our neighbourhood's character, manage traffic, and prevent overdevelopment.
We had the right to view the plans, make formal submissions, and have the project judged on its merits by an impartial authority.
This new system removes that independent umpire.
The Department of Education, the same organisation that wants to build the preschools, now gets to mark its own homework.
It will assess its own projects against its own internal guidelines.
This creates a clear conflict of interest.
Any organisation's primary goal is to deliver its projects quickly and on budget.
This can easily conflict with the need to properly address local concerns about traffic, parking, noise, and building design.
The three most significant differences the community will notice are:
1. Less transparency: The process moves from a public DA portal to an internal departmental review.
2. Reduced Influence: Our feedback will no longer be a formal submission to an independent council, but rather "feedback" to the project developer itself.
Unbelievably, complaints about a project are directed back to the Department's own project hotline.
3. Loss of local control: State-wide design templates will take precedence over our local council's specific planning rules that have been developed over years to protect our local character.
We all support the goal of more public preschools.
But this should not be achieved by dismantling a planning process that protects the community's right to be heard.
This change is a step backwards for local democracy, and our community will be the poorer for it.
SOURCE:
Email, 12 Jul 2025
Francis Wiffen, Woy Woy