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Kingsford Industrial Estate

Experience in both development assessment and policy planning in local government has provided URPS staff with the skills needed to effectively master plan strategically important sites. One such site is the Kingsford Regional Industrial Estate. The need for the plan arose out of an observation that the existing Development Plan policies did not sufficiently promote the coordinated and effective development of the locality, particularly relating to stormwater management, infrastructure provision, and vehicular access issues.

The development of this estate is seen as a major economic driver within the Light Regional Council area and the wider community as it has significant potential to create regional employment growth. The estate is ideally located in terms of key road and rail links and is well positioned to serve the expanding food and viticulture industries. Given the significant increase in residential development nearby in Hewett and Freeling, and the potential increase in Roseworthy, it is important that the value of the industrial area is not compromised and that it is well buffered to allow 24 hour, 7 days a week operations.

The master plan aims to maximise the economic benefits for the region and prevent conflicts with non-industrial activities.

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."