The New South Wales Government has amended Local Environmental Plans to replace Business and Industrial Zones with new 'Employment Zones'.
The changes have been a long time in the making. Originally developed under the former Minister for Planning back in May of 2021, the reforms follow the Productivity Commission's 2021 White Paper 'Rebooting the Economy' which recommended rationalisation of existing business and industrial zones by reducing the overall number of these zones and broadening their permissible activities.
The intention of the new zones is to promote flexibility of land use and support productivity and jobs growth. They seek to achieve this by providing areas that have a diversity of retail, business, office and accommodation uses to increase employment opportunities in accessible locations. The new zones also aim to provide suitable areas for industrial activities and will separate heavy industry from other land uses to minimise environmental impacts.
Business and Industrial zones have been replaced with five new employment zones, to be called:
- E1 Local Centre
- E2 Commercial Centre
- E3 Productivity Support
- E4 General Industrial; and
- E5 Heavy Industrial
Three additional zones have also been created to accommodate land uses in existing business and industrial zones that are not productivity related:
- MU1 Mixed Use
- W4 Working Waterfront; and
- SP4 Enterprise
The amendments were made on 16 December 2022 but the new zones will not take effect until 26 April 2023.
A comparison table showing the existing zones and the new zones can be found here
For further information please contact:
Matthew
Cole, Partner
Phone: +61 2 9777 8371
Email: mxc@swaab.com.au
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