The wide ranging reform agenda of the ambitious new Council continues with another unanimous resolution to make more changes to local planning laws. The employment zone reforms propose a wider range of land uses for business and commercial zones in Armidale and Guyra as well as focusing on encouraging activation of town centres and enabling residential infill development in the Armidale CBD area.
Mayor Coupland said that Council would continue to drive a brave reform agenda to unshackle a local economy that has flat lined over the last 20 years and set the region on a path for success in the coming decades.
“The new Council is committed to delivering a local planning system that invites opportunity in and this latest package of reforms along with our agritourism package and LEP merge project continue us on that journey.
We know that CBDs all over the country are struggling even in places where the population is booming. Town centres are changing, this has been accelerated by COVID and will continue. Only part of the centre’s role will be retail so we are now enabling a wide variety of new land uses to come to our CBD,” concluded Mayor Coupland.
Council will now refer the proposed reforms to the NSW Government to seek their endorsement prior to them coming into effect.
New Council planning agenda
- January: Ambition to grow local jobs by 1000 within 5 years and 4000 by 2040 supported unanimously.
- February: Mayor Sam Coupland’s Planning and Jobs Growth Summit
Armidale Regional LEP supported with additional uses.
- March: Agritourism pack
Employment Zone reforms
Water security package
