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Review of Council Development Plans and relevant strategies as input into the Eyre Peninsula Regional Plan

Despite increasing recognition that planning can play a significant role in achieving better NRM outcomes, the gap between planning and NRM remains largely unbridged.

The NRM Act requires NRM Boards to identify Development Plan policies that should be reviewed to better promote NRM objectives and to improve consistency between planning policy and NRM. It also requires that regional NRM plans, strategies and actions are, as far as practicable, consistent with other relevant legislation, strategies and plans.

The Eyre Peninsula NRM Board engaged URPS to provide input into the preparation of its Regional NRM Plan. In particular, this project focussed on identifying the obligations to be met under sections 75 (3)(f) and 75 (5) of the NRM Act.

This PIA award-winning project used a comprehensive methodology, including qualitative and quantitative analysis, to review the Development Plans of the 11 constituent councils. Specifically, this included consideration of how many policies in the Development Plans relate to a particular NRM issue as well as an assessment of the quality of these policies.

Similar projects have also been undertaken by URPS for the Adelaide and Mount Lofty Ranges NRM Board and the South East NRM Board. The assessment methodologies used have now been extended to other documents, including long-term strategic planning documents.

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."