What are practice notes?
Practice notes are to assist councils, applicants and the community understand and use the infrastructure contributions system.
Practice notes are issued by the Planning Secretary for the purposes of clause 25B(3) and 26 (1) of the Environmental Planning and Assessment Regulations 2000, which require councils to:
- have regard to these practice notes when preparing contributions plans; and
- consider these practice notes when negotiating or entering into a planning agreement.
Why are we updating the practice notes?
As we are updating the infrastructure contributions system it is important to update the practice notes at the same time.
Our reforms will promote investment in public infrastructure to deliver great places and increase housing supply and to unlock up to $12 billion in productivity benefits over the next 20 years.
These practice notes provide advice to councils, developers and the community on planning agreements and infrastructure contribution plans.
They will deliver modern policy advice in a new way to deliver a simple, efficient, certain, transparent, and consistent infrastructure contributions system.
To improve and modernise the infrastructure contributions practice notes we are converting them into individual online modules, based on a specific policy issue.
When finalised, the practice notes will be updated periodically and will be available on the Planning Portal and as a PDF for download.
At a later stage of the reforms, some practice notes will be built into the architecture of the online digital tool.
Note: we are currently only exhibiting 9 modules that cover new or changed policy advice. The remaining modules that will make up the practice notes will continue to be developed as part of the reforms package.
Feedback and consultation
We have written a discussion paper on the proposed changes to practice notes. Please visit the Planning Portal to read the paper. The public exhibition has closed.