Council's whole of LGA Development Control Plan - Local Environment Plan Consultation Imminent
1. Council exhibit the draft Northern Beaches Development Control Plan at Attachment 1 for public comment for 6 weeks in accordance with the requirements of the Environmental Planning and Assessment Act (1979) and the Northern Beaches Community Participation Plan (Plan Making and Development Assessment).
2. Exhibition of the DCP occur concurrently with the planning proposal for the draft Northern Beaches Local Environmental Plan (LEP), once the Department of Planning, Housing and Infrastructure has advised the draft LEP can progress to exhibition.
3. Council delegate authority to the Chief Executive Officer to make any required amendments to the draft Northern Beaches Development Control Plan to address minor drafting errors or the requirements of the Department of Planning, Housing and Infrastructure, prior to the commencement of any public exhibition.
4. A report on submissions be presented to Council following public exhibition.
5. The relevant controls in Manly DCP 2013 (Sections 3.4.2 Privacy and Security and 4.2.5.6 Late Night Venues) be included in the draft Northern Beaches DCP prior to public exhibition, generally in accordance with the existing Manly DCP.
The Draft DCP chapters may be found, along with links to those documents, in the Booklet for the May 2026 Meeting.
An indicative project timeline is:
- May – June 2026: Advice anticipated to be received from NSW Department of Planning, Housing and Infrastructure that the draft LEP can proceed to public exhibition
- July – August 2026: 6-week concurrent public exhibition of draft LEP and DCP
- September – October 2026: consideration of submissions received
- November 2026 – February 2027: amendment of draft LEP and DCP (as required)
- April 2027: report to Council to endorse draft LEP and DCP
- Mid-2027: draft LEP and DCP commence (this timing is dependent on the LEP being finalised by the Minister for Planning and Public Spaces and gazetted).
The Council Agenda for the May Meeting stated funding to support the draft Northern Beaches DCP project, including preparation and public exhibition, is included in the existing budget.
In a released statement after the meeting the council stated:
''Northern Beaches Council has endorsed public exhibition of a new clearer set of draft planning rules, to support consistent decision making and better community outcomes in the development of land and housing across the Northern Beaches area.
The proposed Development Control Plan (DCP) has been more than 5 years in the making, informed by a series of technical studies and several rounds of community consultation.
The draft DCP will consolidate the existing controls contained in Manly, Pittwater, and Warringah DCPs.
It is designed to support the draft Local Environment Plan which is currently with the Department of Planning, Housing and Infrastructure for agreement to progress to community consultation. As they are interdependent, Council plans to exhibit the two plans at the same time.'
'Together, the draft LEP and DCP seek to:
- Protect the environment, views and local heritage
- Respect and preserve local character
- Put housing in the right places to meet different needs
- Reduce urban heat and support resilient and sustainable development
- Protect jobs and employment areas
- Avoid development in hazardous and rural areas
- Create liveable communities with more trees, facilities and sustainable transport
For most of the area, changes will be small and the plans do not propose any significant increases in the scale or density of development, the council stated.
Mayor Sue Heins said the DCP was a critical document that would assist to guide future development in the LGA.
“With years of work and several stages of community input informing the plan, it is great to reach this milestone,” Mayor Heins said.
“We know our community place a high value on protecting our environment and unique neighbourhood character and the draft DCP seeks to achieve this, including several new requirements to consider sustainability, the environment, natural hazards and heritage.
“We expect the final draft LEP and DCP to be exhibited within the coming months and I will be encouraging interested residents to have their say.”
Pittwater Councillor and Greens member Miranda Korzy, stated in her address to the chamber on this Item:
''I’d like to start by thanking staff for their work on this massive project. On a first reading, it seems they have listened to the voices of Pittwater residents who have been distressed about large developments on sensitive sites over recent years.
I believe the new LEP and DCP will provide an opportunity for a reset on this trend.
First of all, I’m really pleased to see Pittwater’s character statements have been retained and the rest of the LGA will now benefit from these guidelines. I’ve compared the (draft) Pittwater statements to the current ones and they appear to coincide but I’d encourage residents to read these for themselves to see if anything’s missing - and I note a few issues on the ground have changed.
Secondly, I’m delighted to see the DCP now includes a limit on depth of excavations to 1 metre along with an emphasis on retaining natural features - something Pittwater residents have called for. I’m not yet clear how this will apply to sloping land - but the document explicitly lists a range of features that should be protected.
These include:
- Escarpments and coastal headlands;
- cliffs, caves, and rock outcrops;
- native vegetation communities and locally native trees, including tree hollows, threatened flora and fauna;
- natural watercourses and wetlands; and finally,
- dune systems.
It also calls for the use of “construction methods that limit impact on sloping or difficult sites - such as pole construction”. And I note the document’s identification of the need for reuse of building material and site materials in an effort to reduce waste and to support a circular economy.
One feature of the Pittwater DCP that residents have always valued is the 60:40 rule - ie 60 per cent of any block should remain landscaped, with only 40 per cent hard surfaces. This has protected the natural vegetation in our gardens and the wildlife that live there - particularly in Endangered or Threatened Ecological Communities.
I’m pleased to see that much of this remains intact in the draft DCP’S Landscape Maps, with some areas such as Bayview Heights requiring 80 per cent landscaped areas and much of Pittwater still at 60 per cent. However, some areas, for example in Mona Vale, Newport and Avalon, are marked down to 50 per cent.
I think this reflects the reality on the ground in some places but I encourage residents concerned about preserving habitat to study these maps and please let me and the council staff know what you think.
Finally, I want to mention tree protection and the draft’s focus on biodiversity. I was delighted to see that many of the development controls explicitly call for retention of trees and other vegetation as well as for regeneration of local native trees. This used to be a guiding principle in Pittwater so I look forward to its reestablishment under the new DCP.
However, the devil will be in the detail for some controls. Eg I’ve heard some feedback about maps, such as for Core Habitat, and the use of LiDAR. This potentially leads to under-representation of important areas that have lost tree cover where it should be regenerated, particularly in EECs, to ensure genetic diversity. But that and other environmental issues will require deeper scrutiny.
I welcome many other aspects of this document, such as the emphasis on sustainable and universal design, however, will leave those to residents to discover for themselves.
Finally, I’m sure our community and environmental groups will examine the draft and I encourage anyone else with an interest in how our neighbourhoods develop to do so as well.'
The council's decision to exhibit as soon as it can should also be taken in conjunction with the current state government plan to limit community scrutiny of developers plans under its proposed 'draft Community Participation Plan'.
Development to be exempted from public exhibition and notification
Under the Discussion Paper for the 'Community Participation Plan' it is proposed to exempt certain development types from public exhibition and notification where the development:
- is permissible in the relevant zone and,
- meets the relevant planning controls in a local environmental plan, development control plan and/or state environmental planning policy and,
- does not include a 4.6 variation
The lists include, under each heading:
Residential and related uses:
- Residential flat buildings*
- Shop top housing*
- Boundary adjustment
- Rural workers dwellings
- Demolition (excluding heritage items)
- Secondary dwellings
- Exhibition homes and villages
- Strata and Stratum subdivision
- Group homes
- Tree removal where they are not heritage items
- Heritage item – minor works that does not impact item and is located behind the front façade
- Home business and/or home occupation
- Alterations - Internal alterations
- Moveable dwellings
- Alterations and additions to existing dwellings
- New single and two storey dwellings, dual occupancies and attached dwellings
- Ancillary development (such as pools, sheds, farm buildings)
- Temporary structures
*a pre-commencement of works notification to adjoining neighbours is required 7 days before works commence
Primary production and rural development:
- Agritourism
- Extensive agriculture
- Commercial farm
- Farm buildings
Commercial development:
- Alterations and additions
- Kiosks
- Change of use
- Roadside stalls
- Take away food and drink premises
- Signage
Industrial development:
- Change of use
- Industrial retail outlets
Community, health, education, recreational and other infrastructure:
- Alterations – internal and external
- Environmental protections works
- Environmental facility
Tourist and Visitor accommodation:
- Bed and Breakfast accommodation
- Farm stay accommodation
Other:
- Modifications involving minimal environmental impact
- Applications made under section 4.55(1) of the EP&A Act.
- Applications made under section 4.55(1A) of the EP&A Act.
- Applications made under section 4.56 of the EP&A Act with minimal environmental impact
- Application for the review of a determination or decision of a consent authority (Division 8.2 Reviews)
- Reviews where the application has not been amended pursuant to section 8.3(3) of the EP&A Act.
Public exhibition of division 8.2 reviews
The Discussion paper states that:
'To support the NSW Government’s Planning Systems Reforms, and increase the uptake of internal reviews, the draft Community Participation Plan proposes changes to the public exhibition period of certain types of reviews. Currently, review applications are to be exhibited for 14 days unless the Community Participation Plan specifies otherwise.
To resolve unnecessary exhibition, in the draft Community Participation Plan the Department is proposing:
- that an application for review that has not been amended pursuant to section 8.3(3) will be exempt from public exhibition. The consent authority will consider submissions made on the original application in determining the review. Notification to previous submitters may still be made.
- where an application has been amended under section 8.3(3), the public exhibition period is to be the same as the original application.
Residential flat buildings and shop top housing
Residential flat buildings and shop top housing are development types which are proposed to be exempt from standard public exhibition and notification across NSW where:
- residential flat buildings or shop top housing are permissible in the relevant zone, and,
- the development meets the controls under a local environmental plan, development controls plan and/or a state environmental planning policy, and,
- does not include a 4.6 variation.
To ensure communities are still being informed, a new pre-commencement notification that requires written notice to adjoining neighbours 7 days prior to works commencing is proposed.
Targeted assessment
The targeted assessment pathway introduced as part of the planning system reforms allows certain steps in the development assessment process such as public exhibition to be turned off where those matters have already been addressed through earlier planning processes. This would be implemented through the introduction of a state environmental planning policy.
Public exhibition requirements for the targeted assessment pathway are detailed in the Environmental Planning and Assessment Act 1979 and included in the draft Community Participation Plan.
Higher impact development
The current minimum 28-day public exhibition timeframe for high impact development such as development that requires an environmental impact statement, designated development, and nominated integrated development will remain unchanged under the proposed changes.
See Report running this week: Scruby Sounds Warning on NSW Government's 'Community Participation Plan': Flats, Shop-top housing, New Dwellings, secondary dwellings even trees to be exempt from Exhibition-consultation