Keep LSPS and LEP aligned and feasibly enabling housing targets.
Councils should ensure local strategic planning statements align with NSW Government strategic plans, priorities and policies, and prepare and deliver local planning strategies in line with Department standards and timeframes. Councils must ensure their LEPs provide enough genuinely feasible housing capacity to meet their housing target, including auditing zones, density controls and development standards. The 2026 Order also refines expectations including planning and updating controls for locally significant industrial land identified in a regional strategic plan.
This part of the Statement of Expectations Order 2026 sets out what the Minister expects councils to do in their strategic (forward) planning work — as distinct from assessing individual development applications. Strategic planning is how a council decides, over the long term, where and how much housing and other development can occur, mainly through its Local Strategic Planning Statement (LSPS), local planning strategies (such as a local housing strategy), and ultimately its Local Environmental Plan (LEP). The Order expects councils to keep these documents aligned with NSW Government regional/district plans and priorities, and to actually deliver on them, not just adopt them.
The central new mechanic is the link between a council's LEP and its housing target. The Order says having housing targets on paper is not enough if the LEP itself does not enable those homes to be built. Councils must ensure their LEP provides housing capacity that is both sufficient in number and genuinely feasible — meaning the zoning, density and development standards must allow development that is economically viable. In practice this pushes councils to audit their LEP, find controls (height limits, floor space ratios, minimum lot sizes) that block feasible housing, and amend the LEP to fix them, in line with Department guidance.
The consequence of not performing is indirect but real: the Order provides Heads of Consideration the Minister weighs before using section 9.6(1)(b) powers to appoint a planning administrator or hand council functions to a regional or district planning panel. This is described as a last resort, preceded by explanations, tailored action plans and support. Strategic-planning underperformance feeds into the overall picture of whether a council is meeting the Minister's expectations.
All NSW councils in their capacity as strategic planning authorities — those preparing and maintaining Local Strategic Planning Statements, local planning strategies (including local housing strategies), and Local Environmental Plans. It is directed at councils rather than applicants or certifiers.
It applies to a council's ongoing strategic planning functions: maintaining and updating its LSPS, preparing and delivering local planning strategies, and ensuring its LEP carries enough feasible housing capacity to meet its housing target. It is triggered where a regional strategic plan sets actions or housing targets, where Department delivery programs set standards and timeframes, and where a council's LEP may not enable the required dwellings.
The source states no formal exemption for the strategic planning expectations. It notes the Department will consider a council's individual circumstances (such as natural disasters or unexpectedly high DA volumes) chiefly in relation to determination timeframes, and that ministerial intervention is a last resort after support and action plans, but it does not carve out any council from the strategic planning or LEP housing-capacity expectations.
Links to the Environmental Planning and Assessment Act 1979 (s.9.6(1)(b) intervention powers and the Heads of Consideration); NSW Government regional and district strategic plans; Local Strategic Planning Statements, local planning strategies and Local Environmental Plans; development control plans and development contributions plans; the Local Housing Strategy Guideline and Department delivery programs/endorsement of local housing strategies (which may impose extra requirements such as an implementation delivery plan); and the National Housing Accord target of 377,000 new homes by 2029.
Council should be satisfied its LSPS aligns with any draft or finalised NSW Government strategic plans, priorities and policies, and reflects progress in local planning and development delivery.
This extends to reviewing or preparing evidence to inform LSPS and local strategy updates, ensuring the actions and housing targets in the relevant regional strategic plan and LSPS are delivered to Department standards and timeframes.
Councils must deliver the actions within local planning strategies, including making necessary amendments to the LEP, development control plan and development contributions plan, and committing finances to fund enabling infrastructure.
Councils must ensure their LEPs have enough feasible housing capacity to deliver on their housing target — capacity that is sufficient in number and economically viable to deliver.
Councils should audit their LEP to test whether zones, density controls and development standards can realistically deliver the required dwellings, identify barriers (height limits, floor space ratios, minimum lot sizes) and update the LEP in line with Department guidance.
This bites directly on Kiama. As a small coastal LGA under housing pressure, Kiama must keep its LSPS aligned with the Illawarra-Shoalhaven Regional Plan and any housing targets, and — critically — must be able to show its LEP genuinely enables enough feasible dwellings to meet that target. Kiama's coastal hazard areas, bushfire-prone fringes and heritage towns constrain where growth can go, so an LEP audit may reveal that height limits, FSRs or minimum lot sizes in the developable areas need loosening to hit feasible capacity. If Kiama has a housing target or projected demand over 500 dwellings it also falls within the criteria the Department uses to focus intervention. Failure to maintain and deliver these strategic documents feeds into the Minister's assessment of council performance and, ultimately, the last-resort power to appoint a planning administrator.
“Council should be satisfied that its local strategic planning statement aligns with any draft or finalised NSW Government strategic plans, priorities and policies, and reflects progress made in local planning and development delivery.”
“Councils must not only prepare local planning strategies but deliver on the actions within them as well.”
“Councils must ensure their LEPs have enough feasible housing capacity to deliver on its housing target.”
“It is not sufficient for a council to have housing targets identified in a strategy if the LEP does not actually enable that housing to be built.”
Reproduced from the NSW Department of Planning, Housing and Infrastructure (planning.nsw.gov.au), © State of New South Wales, under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0. Text extraction may introduce minor formatting artefacts — rely on the official source for anything decision-critical.
This is an unofficial reproduction provided for convenience. It is not the official version of the legislation. For the official, in-force version, see legislation.nsw.gov.au.
The 2026 updates include planning and updating controls for any locally significant industrial land identified in a regional strategic plan.