Waterloo Estate (South) Planning Proposal Exhibition March 2022

The City of Sydney Council have produced a Draft submission on the Waterloo South Planning Proposal. The draft is on the Council website among papers to go to the Transport, Heritage, Environment and Planning Committee on Monday 4 April 2022. It would then be dealt with at the Central Sydney Planning Committee meeting on Thursday 7 April and the Council meeting on 11 April 2022.

The Groundswell agencies have written to academics and planning specialists asking them to support public housing tenants by making expert comment on the Waterloo Planning proposal. While public tenants bring their expertise from living and knowing a location, academics and specialists often know the finer detail that is import for planning authorities to consider. Both kinds of input are important for Waterloo. This letter has been sent out by the Groundswell agencies to their contacts and they are encouraging everyone to make a submission and share it if possible.

REDWatch wrote to Councillors of the City of Sydney regarding the draft submission being considered by Council Committee on 4 April 2022. Prior to this being considered by the Council meeting of 11 April 2022, council officers responded to the issues raised. REDWatch responded again to Councillors on 11 April. As a result of this correspondence and discussions between Councillors, Council passed an improved Waterloo South motion moved by the Lord Mayor and seconded by Councillor Sylvie Ellsmore. Below is the text of the original email posted on 4 April, with council officer’s response (in italics) and REDWatch’s reply now inserted (bold italics) as well as the Council Resolution outcome. Hopefully this information will help inform people’s submissions on this project. We have broken the correspondence up by issues for ease of reference.

On Thursday 7 April 2022 Council staff presented their analysis of the Waterloo South planning proposal to a REDWatch meeting. The analysis compares the exhibited proposal to the Council's proposal prior to modification by the Department of Planning. One of the major take outs was that the exhibited proposal was 10% larger than the community has been lead to believe and that the changes to the proposal including the impact of the extra 10% had not been assessed or disclosed in the in the documents used to explain the planning proposal. The key elements of the Council submission are summarised in this presentation and are important reading for those making submissions about Waterloo South.

This REDWatch Update was part of a REDWatch email circulated prior to the REDWatch meeting on 7 April 2022. It sets out REDWatch's concerns about the Waterloo Planning Proposal on exhibition at that date.

Counterpoint Community Services has finalised its submission on Waterloo South after taking feedback from the Waterloo Redevelopment Group and the community more widely. This is their submission as made to the department of Planning and Environment.

This is a copy of the submitted version of the City of Sydney Council Waterloo South submission. A simple summary can be found in the Council presentation to REDWatch on April 7. This is an important read for anyone making a submission as Council identified that the density (number of dwellings) being disclosed by the DPE Planning Proposal Authority was in fact the minimum likely to be delivered and that the 10% allowed for the design excellence increase is to be additional rather than capped within the stated floor space. The likely outcome is expected to be between 3300 and 3400 depending on unit size not the 3012 referred to in the exhibition material. The increase in the size of the development only became public at the beginning of April as a result of the Council analysis. The PPA continue to use the lower minimum dwelling numbers in their presentations. Council in their draft submission have said this increase in density has not been properly disclosed or tested and Council have questioned if the increase will fit within the planning envelopes exhibited. There is no assessment for example of the impact of the PPE proposal on streets, parks and courtyards. People making submission are encouraged to also read the Council submission rather than take the exhibited material at face value.

Members of the Community are encouraged to make a submission on the Waterloo South Planning Proposal. In doing so it is important that they respond to what is actually on exhibition rather than to the lower density proposal indicated by the support material circulated as part of the exhibition.

The following analysis has been provided by a safety consultant to help people to help people understand the safety and Crime Prevention Through Environmental Design (CPTED) issues raised by the Waterloo South Planning Proposal. IMPORTANT UPDATE - DPE advised the Waterloo Redevelopment Group on 20 April 2022 that they were commissioning a CPTED study on the proposal as part of their assessment.

This submission has been made by Alison Ziller to DPE regarding the Waterloo South Planning Proposal. Alison is a specialist in SIAs and teaches a specialist social impact assessment course as part of Macquarie’s planning degrees. Alison has made her submission available early to help those making submissions understand the importance and role of a SIA. In her submission Alison Ziller points out that Council check list required an ‘outline of likely impacts’ on relevant communities and ‘a plan to reduce negative impacts’ but that Council then accepted the Social Sustainability Report LAHC had already prepared even though it did not include this analysis. As a result issues which would normally central to a SIA were not undertaken and the potential negatiuve impacts were not assessed or proposals for mitigation advanced. Alison Ziller's submission requests the Planning Proposal Authority to undertake a SIA before determining the planning proposal.

A request for an extension by Council to extend the exhibition has been rejected by the Department of Planning and Environment (DPE) Planning Proposal Authority (PPA).The deadline for submissions remains midnight Friday 29th April 2022.

This is the Waterloo South Planning Proposal submission by Eddie Ma from Vigilanti

Below is the text of the REDWatch submission on the Waterloo South Planning Proposal made on 29 April 2022. The links at the top will take you to the relevant part of the REDWatch submission.

This is a copy of the Waterloo (South) Planning Proposal submission made by Shelter (NSW).

The discussion about the need for a Social Impact Study for Waterloo (South) has inspired Geoffrey Atherden to produce this great cartoon on social impacts and why they might catch you unaware. Image Copyright © Geoffrey Atherden.

The Waterloo South submissions are now public. The Department of Planning and Environment Proposal Authority has put all the submissions into one large PDF file of 554 pages (26.4 MB) which can be downloaded from the exhibition site. REDWatch has prepared a separate index to submissions, which is in this section of the website, to help people to quickly find key submissions that may be of interest.

This is the Land and Housing Corporation submission on Waterloo South which has been extracted from pages 490 to 511 of the large consolidated submission file. It has to be remembered that while the land that is being rezoned was mainly LAHC owed land, the proposal exhibited was based on an increased City of Sydney Council proposal. In its submission LAHC argues for nine changes to the planning proposal and its controls. The changes requested include removing the mandate for a certain proportion of social housing; adopting a larger floor plate for the towers; validating that the controls can deliver 255,000 sqm Gross Floor Area and that this floorspace and the 10% increase can be accommodated within the planning controls; Adopting a simpler process for design excellence with competitions for the towers and a design excellence strategy for the rest of the buildings; create a site specific DA in the place of the design guide based on consultants SJB report; and remove the requirement for a Concept DA by adopting a site specific DA.

This index is to the Waterloo South submissions file which is a single 554 page PDF file (26.4 MB) available through the Department of planning and Environments Waterloo South Exhibition page at https://pp.planningportal.nsw.gov.au/ppr/post-exhibition/waterloo-estate-south. The index is designed to help people easily locate submissions that might be of interest. If you find any errors in the file or have suggestions for improvement please email mail@redwatch.org.au

On 5 August 2022, the Department of Planning and Environment (DPE) advised submitters that the department had reviewed all feedback received during the exhibition period. DPE had undertaken some further studies and had made changes to the exhibited plan. Here REDWatch provides a guide to the documents, the changes and the new studies

This map shows the Waterloo South proposed Land Use Zoning Map with the proposed zones. Permissible uses under each zone are shown in the article.