Cold hard facts: Tamworth’s $182 million development boom

Council is spearheading the city’s growth, processing nearly 650 development applications (DAs) and complying development certificates (CDCs) over the course of the 2017/18 financial year.

Council approved 539 DAs for a total cost of $171.4 million, with an average turn around of was 41 days.

TRC also approved 103 CDCs, which generally relate to house additions, that amounted to a value of $11.2 million. Some of the bigger DA’s include RSL LifeCare’s Tamworth facility ($42m), Aldi’s Peel Street plans ($6.4m), and the subdivisions along Moore Creek Road and Grand Meadows Drive.

Tamworth mayor Col Murray said the latest numbers were “cold hard facts” that showed the city was heading in the right direction, and showed Tamworth was becoming an attractive investor destination. 

Cr Murray said it was pleasing to see the DAs were spread across a wide range of industries and sectors.

“That’s a desired growth factor that every city has,” he said. “It’s a much healthier sign to have good diverse growth, rather than growth all in one sector.”

The Tamworth mayor expects the dollars to pour in to the city as it continues on its upward trajectory.

“There are some fairly large projects being talked about,” Cr Murray said.

“Once the intermodal hub gets the go ahead, that will trigger some big applications. There are quite a few sitting on the fence waiting for that to happen.”

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Tamworth Business Chamber president Jye Segboer said the average approval process of 41 days was “remarkable”. 

“In comparison to other regional councils, where you can wait up to three months, that 41-day turn around shows how efficient council is and how motivated they are to keep the town progressing,” Mr Segboer said.

“Tamworth is in a great position on the moment. It’s so unique in comparison to other regional hubs, in that we aren’t reliant on huge government spending to sustain growth.

“We don’t have a massive military base or a big university, we’re self reliant with most of the region’s growth coming off the back of small to medium enterprises.

“We’re growing on our own. It shows the strength and stability we have.”

Cr Murray said council staff had been “seriously under the pump” in recent times due to the volume of applications coming through.

“We’ve been working really hard with the sector in recent years to get the quality of applications to where they need to be,” he said.

“That’s helped to reduce the amount of time staff have to spend investigating DAs.”

In 2017, council processed 530 DAs for a total value of $148.8 million, with an average turn around of 38 days, while in 2016, 552 DAs were approved, worth $132.5 million, with an average processing time of 43 days.