Crows Nest Over Station Development Voluntary Planning Agreement

Submissions closed 5pm Friday 23 April 2021

Crows Nest Metro and OSD

The Crows Nest Metro station which is currently under construction, will be operational by 2024. The NSW Government, through Transport for NSW, has pursued the approval of an “over station development” building envelope associated with the Metro station, for the last few years. On 22 December 2020, the Minister for Planning and Public Spaces issued consent for a concept approval for a building envelope for the 3 sites that comprise the development area of Metro (details below). Whilst this is merely an envelope, with further and more detailed development applications to follow, this concept approval provides a level of development certainty for the site.

View the concept proposal here

What is a Voluntary Planning Agreement?

A voluntary planning agreement (VPA) is an agreement entered into by a planning authority (such as North Sydney Council) and a developer, to enable a range of development contributions to be realised from the planning process.

Under such agreements, the developer may dedicate land free of cost, pay a monetary contribution, or provide any other material public benefit, or any combination of them, to be used for or applied towards a public purpose.

What is in the Crows Nest VPA

Council endorsed a draft VPA for public exhibition for the Crows Nest Over Station Development at its meeting on 22 February 2021. The report is available in the document library or on Council's website.

The draft VPA comprises the following components:

• Up-front payment of all developer contributions (section 7.11 contributions, previously referred to as section 94 contributions). This would be to the value of approximately $9.8M which would otherwise be payable at later stages of the development process and would be received in stages, quite probably several years into the future.
• The payment of an additional $2M monetary contribution for public domain improvements, also paid “up-front”. Council has resolved that this component will be a contribution to the Holtermann Park project that Council is currently working on.
• The total $11.8M monetary contribution is payable within 30 days of the VPA being executed.

Advantages

There are several advantages to the draft VPA. Firstly, contributions money is made available “up front” rather than being received in periodic instalments aligning with the development of the land which would occur some years into the future. Secondly, this mechanism enables a greater degree of flexibility in the money's expenditure including the payment of $2M which is over and above the applicant’s normal contributions responsibilities.

Council would ordinarily receive a total of approximately $9.8M in S7.11 contributions over the life of the construction of the Over Station Development. This would occur periodically over the coming years depending on the timing of those developments. The draft VPA is designed to consolidate these into one payment at the beginning of the process with an additional $2M payment.

The exhibition of the draft VPA commenced on 22 March 2021 and ended on 23 April 2021.

For more information contact Marcelo Occhiuzzi, Manager Strategic Planning on 9936 8100.

Note: in accordance with Council's Access to Information Policy, submissions in response to planning matters are considered open access information under the Government Information (Public Access) Act 2009. In the interests of public transparency, your submission in its entirety may be made available via Council’s website (or Council's Applications Tracking site), unless you request all or part to be withheld. Submitters are encouraged to read Council’s Information Sheet: Making a Submission to Council prior to making a submission.