Murray River Council lobbying for change to streamline development

Murray River Council mayor Chris Bilkey said the “dramatic growth in development applications” was welcomed, but also a challenge.

“We’re busy seeking additional building surveyors, who are very difficult to employ at the moment because of a variety of issues,” he said.

“We’ve employed apprentices into that role whose eventual accreditation will ease the problem and we’re advocating very strongly with state governments to create a single accreditation, applicable across the border.”

As the applications started to flood in about July last year, the council lost two building surveyors, leaving the remaining two and a three-day-a-week contractor with a mountain of work.

Applications are taking 90 days for the council to process, causing frustration among people trying to get their homes built.

On Tuesday, March 23, the council met with a small group of builders to address the challenges being faced on both sides.

Cr Bilkey, Cr Campbell, Cr Wise and Cr Aquino and some council staff were in attendance and heard from local builders Leo Welch, Mark and Sam Hartley and Stephen Robson.

Interim planning and environment director Rod Croft said his staff were still working their way through a backlog from last year.

“We’re receiving more applications than we ever have,” Mr Croft said.

“We’re not recruiting as well as we’d like and the financial incentives thrown out by governments are probably working against us a little bit, because there a lot more people wanting to build.”

The council has been unsuccessful in trying to recruit building surveyors for three years, due to a national shortage and the lack of mutual recognition between states.

Despite operating under a national code, qualified building surveyors from other states, including Victoria, have to go through a 12-month process to be accredited and operate in NSW.

According to council, outsourcing to private certifiers has also proved fruitless due to its workloads being dominated by Victorian councils along the border that generally use them for all private works.

To combat these challenges the council brought on two cadets in August last year, and have committed to bringing on more at the end of this year, but with their accreditation two to three years away there will still be a gap.

An issue raised by the builders was the NSW requirement for landowners in housing estates or subdivisions to submit a development application (DA) to build a home, despite the estate already being approved for residential development.

“To get a DA to build on a block that’s already been approved to build on – it’s just stupidity,” Mr Welch said.

“The bigger picture isn’t the staffing issues at the shire. The issue is the legislation, so the targets have got to be the cross-border commissioners and these sort of guys.”

Mark Hartley of Hartley Building Co said it was “double dipping”.

“This is one of our major hold-ups,” he said.

“Why are we advertising for 14 days to put a brick garage up at Barber’s Paddock (estate)? These are the things that are holding us up and bogging people down.

“We need someone who’s going to push this along because until we do this, we’re going to be sitting here for the next 12 months talking about the same things.”

In Victoria, any residential development in a residential subdivision which already has a planning permit (DA equivalent) only requires a building permit (construction certificate equivalent) – a process the Murray River Council is working with the NSW Government to mimic.

The builders said if NSW legislation doesn’t change, they will be having the same conversations with the council in years to come.

“It’s déjà vu,” Mr Welch said.

“It’s probably worse now than it was (five years ago), and it’s not getting better.

“It’s a blight on the shire; not because of the people but because of the process.”

Member for Murray Helen Dalton submitted a question on notice to the NSW Minister for Better Regulation and Innovation on March 16, after correspondence from the council.

She asked if the government would consider scrapping the need for dual registration for Victorian building surveyors to work in border regions and the extra 12-month study requirement for them to work in NSW.

She also asked it to consider encouraging the Commonwealth Government to extend HomeBuilder to those who have been unable to gain building approval by the deadline due to a shortage of building surveyors.

An answer to the question is due by April 20.

The pressure is unlikely to ease soon, with subdivisions of around 800 blocks given approval in recent months, and the council looking to release more between now and June.

But the council hopes a new online planning portal, which will be used from July 1 this year, will make the process more efficient.

It will take the development application process online, from submissions to correspondence and inspection bookings.

The council also committed to putting together fact sheets and examples of minimum standards in the hope it will reduce the number of Request for Information (RFI) needing to be sent back to the builders.

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