Apartment Design Policy close to final release

The Property Council attended a briefing this week from the Department of Planning, Lands & Heritage on the current status of Design WA and the draft Apartment Design Policy, including potential changes to be made post-consultation.

Based on feedback from industry and other stakeholders, the Department has been busy doing detailed design and feasibility exercises to test the new policy settings – the aim is for the policy to be ground-truthed before it is finalised. The Property Council supports this approach as long as the testing is based on market realities – discussion with the Department on this point and others was very productive and we welcome the certainty that finalisation of the policy will bring.

We took the opportunity to raise concerns of industry about the way the Apartment Design Policy is being applied by some local governments while it is still in draft format. The Department have accepted that this is an issue and, at the Property Council’s suggestion, have agreed that the WAPC will communicate with all local governments to clarify what status the policy has and how decision-makers should be applying discretion around policy settings prior to finalisation.

The Property Council appreciates the willingness of the State Government to engage with industry on this critical policy initiative.