With rising interest rates and a cost-of-living crisis significantly impacting the NSW population, it’s not surprising that this year’s Budget focuses on addressing the housing crisis and rebuilding essential services.
For the property and infrastructure industry, some of the key takeaways from this year’s Budget include the Government’s commitment to speeding up the planning system, and critical funding required to address the housing supply, affordability and feasibility crisis in NSW.
Improving the planning system
The Budget includes a significant investment to bolster the NSW planning system to help increase housing supply, deliver more infrastructure and support job creation. This funding includes:
- $253.7 million to overhaul the planning system and assist with re-balancing housing around existing infrastructure. This includes funding more planners and critical staff to assess development applications and deliver additional State-led rezonings.
- $20.4 million to deliver improvements to the NSW Planning Portal.
- $246.7 million for enabling infrastructure, land acquisitions, and conservation activities to deliver more housing in Western Sydney and across the regions.
- $35 million for the NSW Building Commission to support ongoing efforts to reform the building and construction industry.
- $200 million for the Faster Assessments program to support council grants that deliver infrastructure and housing.
Delivering more homes for NSW
The NSW Government has announced its largest-ever investment in social housing through the $6.6 billion Building Homes for NSW program which aims to:
- Build 8,400 new public homes with priority given to victim-survivors of domestic and family violence.
- Deliver over 21,000 affordable and market homes on well-located government surplus land.
- Repair, restore and fix 30,000 public homes to make them safe and liveable.
- Repair 3,500 Aboriginal and Housing Office (AHO) homes.
Constructing critical infrastructure
Over the next four years, the NSW Government will invest $119.4 billion into the Essential Infrastructure Plan to rebuild public services, drive new housing supply and support the growth of existing communities. This funding includes:
- $62.9 billion for transport and infrastructure, including investment in the Sydney Metro, Western Sydney Harbour Tunnel Upgrade, Road Safety Investment, Elizabeth Drive upgrade, and the widening of Mamre Road.
- $13.4 billion for health infrastructure to support the planning and delivery of new and upgraded hospitals across NSW.
- $9.5 billion to support the planning and delivery of new and upgraded schools.
- $4.5 billion for climate change, energy, the environment, and water infrastructure.
How can Barker Ryan Stewart assist?
We are looking forward to continuing working with NSW Government agencies including Schools Infrastructure NSW, NSW Land and Housing Corporation, Transport for NSW, NSW Health and Landcom to help deliver better outcomes for communities across the state.
We are well-resourced and positioned to provide our full range of services for your next project, please don’t hesitate to contact us for more information about how we can assist.
