Stockland a winner in plan to speed up environmental approvals
Stockland will be one of the biggest beneficiaries of federal government plans to accelerate environmental assessments of housing applications in a bid to clear a 26,000-lot backlog and speed up the delivery of new housing.
The ASX-listed developer, which has 20,000 potential housing lots awaiting assessment under the Environmental Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act, welcomed last week’s move by the housing and environment ministers to set up a team to review applications.
“Solving the pipeline of EPBC applications is one of the biggest levers that will accelerate the delivery of around 20,000 homes in Stockland communities across Australia,” a company spokesman said.
But developers are not sure how many applications submitted to the environmental assessment process have the potential for immediate approval and attention, and how many may require further action on their part.
The number of homes in the environmental approvals process is also much larger than 26,000. The Urban Development Institute of Australia, which represents major developers, put the number at more than 40,000. The institute said in March that more than two-thirds of the national housing pipeline was being held up by environmental and assessment issues.
“A significant issue faced by the sector is the uncertain definition of an application affected by the EPBC process – which makes it extremely difficult to accurately determine the overall number impacted – as applications may either be sitting with the department or have been pushed back to the proponent,” a spokesman for the institute said.
Stockland, the country’s biggest developer of master planned communities, is highly exposed to the environmental process, but others are not.
Mirvac said it had no home applications in the system. Lendlease said it no longer had any in the environmental approvals chain after receiving consent to proceed two weeks ago for 2000 homes at its Gurrowa Place mixed-use development on 3.2 hectares at Melbourne’s Queen Victoria Market.
But land developers are exposed. Perth-based Satterley, the country’s biggest private residential land developer which operates across Western Australia, Victoria and Queensland, has no estates tied up in the environmental process in the eastern states.
“Any policy change that unlocks land supply and brings housing to market faster is a positive,” a Satterley spokesman said. “We commend the federal government for looking at options to do this by cutting red tape and streamlining processes, including speeding up the EPBC process.”
In announcing the new approvals process, Environment Minister Murray Watt and Housing Minister Clare O’Neil said they would, in addition to the new “strike team” to speed up assessment, make it easier for applications to get fast approval and test artificial intelligence to simplify the process.
The need for a more productive home-building sector was driven home by new numbers showing residential construction barely grew in the three months to June. The value of residential construction ticked up just 0.1 per cent to $24.2 billion in the June quarter – the weakest reading in 18 months – after clocking up quarterly increases of 1.4 per cent in the March and December quarters, Australian Bureau of Statistics figures showed.
“There are pockets of capacity improvement, but labour shortages persist and are set to limit activity medium term,” said Oxford Economics economist Michael Dyer, who predicted an increase in output.
“The government flagged a pause to further changes to the National Construction Code for residential building until the National Housing Accord concludes, and the fast-tracking of some development assessments,” Dyer said. “More broadly, we are increasingly optimistic about the impact of a series of state level initiatives and policies in drawing out apartment projects, particularly in the key Sydney and Melbourne markets.”
