Is Our Infrastructure Keeping Up with Our Growth?

by Cllr Andrew Nelson

Willoughby is one of eight councils banding together as the Northern Sydney Regional Organisation of Councils (NSROC) to make the case for the infrastructure our region needs. Its 2025-2028 Infrastructure Priority Statement (https://nsroc.com.au/strategies/) sets out where the group wants action across five areas:

1. social and cultural

2. waste

3. sports and recreation

4. transport

5. education and health.

For each area, NSROC maps out what’s already being built, what’s a priority through to 2028, what’s in the pipeline beyond that, and what the NSW Government needs to deliver to make it all work.

Waste: a growing mountain

The Northern Sydney Regional Waste Strategy helps councils manage our rubbish. It forecast that the region’s waste could jump 14% between 2020 and 2041, and that figure may already be out of date. Plans on the table include:

· finding a site for a regional waste transfer station and/or organics processing facility

· researching how to roll out food organics and garden organics (FOGO) collection

Who pays?

One theme runs through the whole document: cost shifting. That’s when the State Government hands councils the bill for projects it once funded itself.

Sport and recreation

Two local projects get a mention. Master planning is underway for the Gore Hill Indoor Sports Centre, but the money hasn’t been found yet. At Chatswood High School, the playing surface and surrounding facilities need renewal, yet the State Government has declined to chip in this year. That’s cost shifting in action, and negotiations continue.

Getting around

Transport priorities include:

• a bus rapid transit link from Chatswood interchange to the Northern Beaches (Dee Why and Frenchs Forest), led by Willoughby and Ku-ring-gai councils

• an upgrade of the Chatswood bus interchange, led by Willoughby City Council.

In my view, these are only the tip of the iceberg. Densification is racing ahead in North Sydney, Willoughby and Ku-ring-gai, and the Western Harbour Tunnel is nearly finished, which will likely bring more traffic our way.

Cyclists have a new reason to cheer: the bike ramp at the northern end of the Harbour Bridge has sent bike numbers across the bridge climbing. But the route through North Sydney still has a long way to go.

Schools and hospitals

For Willoughby, the list includes new primary schools in Chatswood and St Leonards, an upgrade to Northbridge Public School, and cyclical maintenance at Royal North Shore Hospital. Many locals argue the hospital needs far more than maintenance. It needs a genuine upgrade.

The answers we’re not getting

I’ve written to several Government Ministers asking about population projections and infrastructure plans. The replies have consistently made little sense.

The State Government has now released the final Sydney Plan (https://www.planning.nsw.gov.au/plans-in-nsw/plans-by-region/the-sydney-plan), which promises to match growth with infrastructure. For the North Shore, the pickings are slim.

And with State net debt climbing by around $25 billion a year, it’s fair to ask whether the Government can afford to deliver the new and upgraded infrastructure our community will need.

Overview of changes to the planning laws in NSW

by Jan Primrose - Convenor Better Planning Network

Chatswood West Ward Progress Association recently joined the Better Planning Network and its sub- committee, Doing Density Better. Better Planning Network was formed in 2012 in response to the then O’Farrell Government’s proposed planning reforms that prioritised developer profits over the public interest. 14 years later, here we are again, resisting planning reforms that are as bad, if not worse, than what was proposed back in 2012.

Community amenity right across Sydney and beyond is being significantly impacted by massive increases in density using the raft of new planning reforms. Doing Density Better was formed as part of BPN late last year to specifically focus on the NSW Government's raft of changes which allow these huge density increases. The Government has created an alphabet soup of reforms, from the new CPP, to SSDs and SSRs, TODs and TADs, LMRs, and everything in between. 

For those of you unfamiliar with some of these acronyms, an overview follows:

• CPP -  A new new statewide Community (non) Participation Plan which overrides the CPP that your local council created in consultation with its residents. This statewide CPP determines community input including which developments are exhibited, which are exempted from exhibition and the minimum time frames for exhibition.

• TOD – Transport Oriented Developments are state government designated areas of high density residential units around certain train stations.

• TAD - Targeted Assessment Developments will sit between Complying Development and full DA Assessment. Basically they're Complying Development on steroids.

• SSD - In 2023 State Significant Development definitions were expanded to include residential development, allowing the NSW Minister for Planning to designate apartment blocks that meet certain criteria as being SSD. Criteria include an estimated development cost of $60M in Sydney, Newcastle and Wollongong, and $30M in regional NSW.

• SSR - In November 2025 the State Government published its State Significant Rezoning Policy. This allows the NSW Government to override a Local Environmental Plan and rezone a site or area if residential rezoning is considered by the Minister to be of state or regional significance. Considerations are - assessment time savings, a DA that can be submitted within 6 months, a site that's well located, there would be 100 jobs created, 50 affordable dwellings, or 100 dwellings in regional NSW and 500 dwellings in metropolitan NSW.

• LMR – Low and Mid-Rise This is a two-step reform. The Low Rise Housing reform allows dual occupancies (duplexes), terraces, townhouses and manor houses on residential blocks of a certain size, with some exceptions such as on bushfire prone land. The Mid Rise Housing reform allows 3 to 6 storey mid-rise apartment buildings. In reality, with the Affordable Housing Bonus, up to 9 storeys is permissible plus greater site coverage, if 'affordable' housing is included in the development. 

Many of these planning reforms are allowing what used to be known as 'spot rezoning', which every Council and every town planner knows is simply bad planning. Councils cannot plan their infrastructure if they don't know where and when developments are going to be proposed.

There is a glimmer of light at the end of the tunnel. The NSW Liberal Opposition recently announced it will wind back the Low and Mid-rise Housing Policy if elected, allowing councils to decide where low and mid rise housing can be built in their electorate. That's a good first step but there's a lot more that needs to be brought under control. Next steps are residential housing must be removed from the State Significant Development pathway, and communities must have more say in the decision making process, not just be part of a restricted tick-a-box exercise.