Code of conduct for employees and subsidiaries of joint planning boards

LG Leader April 2020

Recently, the Independent Commissioner Against Corruption Regulations 2013 were amended so that all employees, members and subsidiaries (including the subsidiary’s employees) of joint planning boards established under the Planning, Development and Infrastructure Act 2016 are all ‘public officers’ and ‘public authorities’ under the Independent Commissioner Against Corruption Act 2012. This is a logical step towards the establishment of joint planning boards, and reflects their statutory role and importance under the Planning, Development and Infrastructure Act 2016.

Many regional councils are currently entering into arrangements to establish regional assessment panels. This is considered, in many cases, to be the initial step in achieving greater regionalisation of planning functions and powers, with a view to the future establishment of joint planning boards in those regional areas.

Regional assessment panel members and assessment managers are already declared to be public officers under the Independent Commissioner Against Corruption Regulations 2013. In this way, the declaration of joint planning board members, employees and subsidiaries within that definition and that of ‘public authorities’ does not pose any new difficulties for councils when considering transitions from regional assessment panel shared services models to a joint planning board arrangement.

In more recent news, the anticipated Planning Development and Infrastructure (Commencement of Code) Amendment Bill passed both houses of Parliament on 5 March 2020. This means that the State Government has now formally removed the deadline date of 1 July 2020 for the implementation of the Planning and Design Code, and replaced the deadline with a date to be determined by the Minister for Planning. Although this means that the Code can still be ‘phased’ in by implementation in the regions first, before metropolitan areas, it is likely that joint planning arrangements are unlikely to be considered by the Minister until the Code and the Planning Development and Infrastructure Act 2016 are fully implemented across SA.