Greater Hume to recruit town planner as investment in council growth

In 2021, Greater Hume's Environmental Planning Department completed 726 applications for developments, up from 592 in 2020, which was up from 508 in 2019.

Director of Environment and Planning Colin Kane said his team couldn't keep up with increased applications for another year, so Council was seeking two additional town planning staff to join their team.

"The 726 is being split up between the staff that we've got, which is myself and two others, which has been the same for 15 years, but if we stay at that level we can't keep doing it," he said.

"Everyone felt a bit under pressure getting those applications assessed, I would have said that we dealt with it fairly well, but you just can't continue with it on that level, the pressure to try and meet time frames and the like just take too much out of staff."

Mr Kane attributed the rise in development applications to COVID-19.

"There's been some migration out of the cities to regional areas," he said.

"And you only need a very small percentage of people to leave the cities to have a big impact in the country, to the regional areas where they go to.

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"Greater Hume is a nice area we've got good offerings for people to come.

"Also because people couldn't go on holidays, they spent money on making improvements around the house, whether that be a shed or a pool or a whole new house."

Mr Kane said the new staff could cost $150,000, but it would be an investment for Council.

"It's certainly a good problem for council in the long run," he said.

"You're doing the development for people, their houses and their sheds, but the other part of planning is also planning for growth, so where your new subdivisions are going to go, the roads, the water and the sewage.

"When that's all done, that provides an opportunity for council to attract more residents and when there's more residents, there's more income generated for council through rates, so it's a nice problem to have."

However, Mr Kane said it may be difficult for Greater Hume to find suitable new staff.

"Town planners are in really short supply though, so we'll start trying to recruit, but there's a lot of demand for town planning staff at the moment," he said.

"But you don't know until you try, so we'll give it a go."

Mr Kane said other regional councils were also sitting on the back of big years for development applications due to COVID-19.

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