Gold Coast City Council pavement design changes

Gold Coast City Council has introduced immediate changes to their pavement design requirements, while undertaking a broader review of these standards.

The review of the pavement design standards contained in the City Plan Land Development Guidelines, will consider the cost impact of meeting current standards, whole of life costs, and how the standards compare to other South East Queensland local government areas.

Research released by the Property Council last year revealed that inconsistent council road requirements are driving up the cost of new housing in South East Queensland. While the infrastructure standards review, undertaken by Calibre Consulting on behalf of the Property Council, did not analyse Gold Coast standards – it did uncover significant cost variances between jurisdictions for similar roads. 

While the review is being conducted, Gold Coast City Council has immediately implemented two temporary changes:

• The City will apply the most recent version of Planning Scheme Policy 11 – Land Development Guidelines pavement design requirements to permissible change requests where the existing development approval currently requires compliance with the City Plan LDG’s pavement design requirements.
• The City will condition future development approvals to require compliance with the most recent version of Planning Scheme Policy 11 – Land Development Guidelines pavement design requirements.

Permissible change of use requests can be made by applicants with existing approvals that require compliance to superseded design requirements.

The review is expected to be finalised and considered by Council in the second half of 2017.