What the City is Doing
The City of Sydney seeks to achieve sustainable use of land within its area through land use planning, management of contaminated land, sustainable buildings and partnerships.
The primary tool engaged by Council to ensure that development is socially equitable and environmentally sensitive is through planning controls.
Land Use Planning
The City has a series of plans to address environmental issues such as contaminated land, signage, heritage, open space, site specific plans of management, cycle ways, pedestrian access, onsite parking and access to transport and services.
The City is also in the process of developing an Environmentally Sustainable Development Control Plan (DCP). The DCP provisions aim to deliver leading edge environmental outcomes for multi-unit residential development and all forms of non-residential development including commercial, retail, industrial and mixed uses.
We have engaged the services of Lincolne Scott Australia to assist us in this task, particularly for developing appropriate green building performance standards. The Green Star rating tool developed by the Green Building Council of Australia will form the basis for some of the performance criteria.
In an effort to reduce confusion in the development sector, the City has chosen to develop performance criteria through the established and well regarded Green Star tool rather than developing different objectives and performance criteria.
The DCP will include a specific multi-unit residential component, however, it can not mandate beyond water and greenhouse performance targets set by the NSW Building and Sustainability Index (BASIX) scheme. The intellectual property developed will be shared with the Green Building Council for later adaptation into a residential Green Star tool.
Through extensive stakeholder consultation, it is envisaged that the controls will:
- integrate assessment of environmental impacts with development
- improve environmental performance of buildings
- reduce resource use, waste and pollution
- improve the quality of city life
- promote use of renewable energy and materials
Managing Contaminated Land
The City of Sydney identifies potentially contaminated land and facilitates investigation and remediation through the development application process.
On 28 June 2004, the City of Sydney introduced a new Contaminated Land Development Control Plan (DCP), which applies to all land where the City of Sydney or Central Sydney Planning Committee are the consent authority.
The Contaminated Land DCP establishes a procedural framework for the integration of contaminated land management into the City’s planning and development process. It ensures that with each application, consideration is given to previous land uses which may have caused contamination and could cause potential risk to health or the environment.
Under the DCP, the City of Sydney conducts an initial evaluation as part of the development assessment process to determine whether contamination is an issue and whether sufficient information is available for Council to carry out its planning functions.
Where further information is required, the applicant is responsible for engaging a suitably qualified environmental consultant to undertake the appropriate investigations, which usually consist of four stages: preliminary investigation; detailed investigation; remedial action plan; and validation and monitoring.
All investigations are carried out in accordance with requirements of the DEC guidelines and the process and outcomes may be reviewed by an independent site auditor who is accredited by the DEC, if the City believes that the information provided by the applicant is incorrect or incomplete.
The outcome of this review is a Site Audit Statement which specifies the land use suitable for the site. The City of Sydney maintains a register of all premises where a Site Audit Statement has been issued.
Last Updated: Thursday 15 December, 2005
