A Western Australia council is trying to implement its local benefits requirements into planning frameworks by attempting to make it a condition of permits, with Ace Power’s $400 million solar and battery energy storage system (BESS) the testing ground for whether planners will agree.
The Narrogin shire council is asking state planners to include a public art fund and a community enhancement fund as a condition for approving the 200 megawatt (MW) solar farm and 200 MW, four hour BESS.
The wheatbelt council has been vocal about formalising the give-and-take between developers and communities for some time, as New South Wales (NSW) has done and Victoria is in the process of doing, but developers have so far sidestepped the small community’s demands to take part in its more standardised system.
The Western Australian government is yet to make a start on a similar framework, meaning WA planning rules don’t account for community wishes with regards to the energy transition, leaving councils to negotiate as best they can.
This situation led to a Regional Development Assessment Panel (DAP) meeting last week delaying a decision on Ace Power’s $400 million project by 30 days, to give the council and the developer more time to negotiate over last minute revisions to almost all of the shire’s requested permit conditions.
“The shire planning report, which is generally satisfactory in its… content, recommends several proposed conditions for approval, some of which are problematic in that they are unsound, not feasible or unreasonable,” Land Insights senior planner Rebecca Hampson told the panel, as she represented Ace Power.
She said the council had taken on Ace Power’s recommendations for revising most of the conditions, such as niggles over road upgrades and who should be responsible for handling complaints about the project, but the public art and community enhancement funds were “sticking points”.
They also recommended that a requirement to include plans for decommissioning and rehabilitation in the planning permit also be deleted.
Ace Power believes community benefits negotiations aren’t mandated in planning rules and should take place outside planning applications, Hampson said.
“[These] require contributions to a yet to be established community enhancement fund, raising questions about its justification, fairness and legality. This policy [to require a community enhancement fund] was endorsed by council post lodgement of this application and there is currently no state planning framework that applies to the creation of these funds,” Hampson said.
“However the proponent is happy to have negotiations outside of planning applications to have negotiations with the shire to establish this.”
The proposed funds are part of the council’s policy to ensure projects give back to the local community in a structured way.
The DAP panel wanted to know what the “needs nexus” was for the council to have the two funds included in the planning permit — and what they intended to get out of it.
A shire council representative said while the policy isn’t embedded yet in planning frameworks, the council has been looking into how to implement it through these.
He said the council is looking at the ideas being launched in eastern states and intimated that it doesn’t want to miss out on opportunities for the community just because WA hasn’t taken action yet.
Looking for guidance
Despite final planning approval lying with the DAP, Narrogin shire council has been vocal about forging its own path forward and urging the state government to do something.
In April, the council begged the new state government to get cracking on a NSW-like framework that outlined exactly what councils, landowners, neighbours and developers could expect from the energy transition.
And last year the council endorsed a policy to ensure developments are done in line with community expectations, and has watched as other states firm up benefits funds and decommissioning requirements.
However, it’s had a hard time getting developers to follow these local wishes.
Last year French developer Neoen also declined to include the council’s policy in its plans for its 200MW Narrogin wind farm, saying in planning documents the rules would make “most wind projects unviable” and weren’t evidence-based.
