The Canterbury Bankstown local government area is one Shelter continues to focus on. With over 370,000 plus residents and pressure to grow even more, the local government area is on the cusp of losing its status as a relatively affordable area close to Sydney’s centre. The NSW Government has tasked Council with delivering an additional 50,000 dwellings in the twenty years to 2036.
Over a number of submissions, Shelter has commended the Council for its ongoing, honest recognition of the LGA’s housing affordability issues and applauded its aspirations to ensure a pipeline of more affordable and diverse dwellings.
The Canterbury Bankstown local government area is one Shelter continues to focus on. With over 370,000 plus residents and pressure to grow even more, the local government area is on the cusp of losing its status as a relatively affordable area close to Sydney’s centre. The NSW Government has tasked Council with delivering an additional 50,000 dwellings in the twenty years to 2036.
Over a number of submissions, Shelter has commended the Council for its ongoing, honest recognition of the LGA’s housing affordability issues and applauded its aspirations to ensure a pipeline of more affordable and diverse dwellings.
It was with some disappointment however, that we reviewed the draft masterplan for the Campsie and Bankstown town centres. The plans would see an additional 5,600 dwellings in Campsie and a substantial 12,500 additional dwellings in Bankstown. Achievement of these targets would require significant changes to planning controls to enable densification in the two town centres.
Shelter recently made a submission to Council on the draft masterplans.
We commended the Council for:
- proposals to improve the diversity of dwellings requiring for example, a far greater proportion of 3+ bedrooms in buildings with more than 20 dwellings
- a requirement for any new dwellings to comply with the Liveable Housing Design Guidelines as well as other ‘family friendly’ and ‘flexible working’ floorspace and design requirements
- its efforts made to propose an Affordable Rental Housing scheme for Campsie and Bankstown
We did register our concern however, about the limited nature of the proposed Affordable Housing Contribution Schemes for the Campsie and Bankstown town centres. Council proposes an affordable housing contribution of just 3% of total dwellings of a development (or monetary contributions). While Shelter NSW is not privy to the viability testing that produced this proposed scheme and rate, we note that it is well short of Council’s own previous plan to instate a 5% contributions scheme and even further short of the recommend 5-10% housing targeted included in the Greater Sydney Commission Southern District plan. Shelter NSW has recommended that Council review its approach entirely, on the grounds that in all likelihood it will not deliver the scale of affordable rentals housing required in the LGA.
For a more detailed read of the submission please see: Shelter NSW Submission – Campsie & Bankstown draft Masterplans