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Pt Augusta Urban Growth DPA

Over the last few years, Port Augusta has made a strong recovery from a sustained period of economic hardship caused by the significant downsizing of Australian National Rail and ETSA operations in the city. This recovery has been based on substantial improvements in the resource, service and tourism sectors supported by the Adelaide to Darwin Railway and the extension of the Pichi Richi railway line into city centre.

This recent strong economic growth, which has seen the demand for residential and industrial land outstripping supply, is likely to continue for the foreseeable future. For this reason, Council commissioned URPS to update its planning controls to provide a clear direction for the future growth of Port Augusta. This involved a detailed analysis of land supply and demand in concert with a review of infrastructure capacity and land capability. The result was a DPA that provides a clear planning framework to guide the growth of Port Augusta over the next 20 years. A key challenge with this DPA was the management of land owners' expectations for rezoning and the alignment of policy changes with the State Government's evolving Port Augusta Structure Plan.

The Minister for Urban Development & Planning released the Ministerial Mount Barker Urban Growth Development Plan Amendment (DPA) in June 2010 for public consultation. This DPA proposes to rezone approximately 1300 hectares of rural land on the edges of Mt Barker and Nairne for residential and light industrial use.

With the aim of ensuring that its community was well informed and empowered to comment on the Ministerial DPA, the District Council of Mt Barker engaged URPS to run a series of information sessions for the local community. These six sessions were extremely well attended, with more than 300 people able to hear about and ask questions regarding the Ministerial DPA process and how to go about getting involved in this part of the planning system.

In a letter to the editor of the Mt Barker Courier, Jean Lovell of Nairne said that "Mt Barker Council is to be congratulated for its commitment to proper community consultation" and that URPS was "highly professional and responded in detail to questions in an articulate, honest and informed manner".

This is evidence of the success of these types of community information sessions and the goodwill and engagement that Mt Barker Council has fostered with its community through the process. We also believe that this type of process leads to informed and valuable input from the community to key planning initiatives such as this Ministerial DPA."