This has been a year of both vindication and vigilance.

A year on from FOKE’s 2025 annual report, the reality of the impacts and implementation of the NSW Government’s State Environmental Planning Policies (SEPPs), being the Transport Oriented Development (TOD) and Low and Mid-Rise Housing (LMRH) policies are now in full effect and in operation across Ku-ring-gai and other parts of metropolitan Sydney. The dual occupancy rezoning affecting suburbs across New South Wales (NSW) has also been part of this suite of changes.

Not only will we have to contend with the new housing policies but the most significant overhaul of NSW planning legislation in a generation is now being rolled out in incremental stages. The changes being anchored by the Environmental Planning and Assessment (Planning Systems Reforms) Act 2025 which passed into law in November 2025 with near unanimous support in the NSW Government. Commencement is by staged proclamation with the first tranche taking effect on15 December and the second on 21 March 2026, with further provisions to follow over the next 12 months. There is more detail about the NSW Government’s significant planning changes later in this report.

In updating you with Council’s response to the NSW Government’s TOD housing policy, Ku-ring-gai Council unanimously resolved at its meeting on 18 November 2025 to accept the NSW Government’s offer to discontinue Council’s legal challenge in the Land and Environment Court against the State’s original Transport-Oriented Development (TOD) policy. With both parties agreeing to bear their own costs, the resolution brought the legal proceedings to an end following the NSW Government’s decision to adopt council’s alternative TOD plan that reflects Council’s preferred approach for the four station precincts (Gordon, Killara, Lindfield and Roseville).

The NSW Government published the amended clauses for Ku-ring-gai’s TOD Alternative on the NSW Legislation website on 14 November 2025, marking the formal adoption of the plan. This plan delivers 24,562 dwellings, 1,362 dwellings over the required government’s TOD target housing capacity of 23,200 dwellings for Ku-ring-gai. The council’s alternative plan is still to be tested as to whether it will provide stronger protection for Ku-ring-gai’s heritage, environment and tree canopy, and ensuring more appropriate transitions between lower and higher-density development than the State Government’s TOD State Environmental Planning Policy (SEPP).

Council’s TOD alternative plan was the product of public consultation with the community and collaboration with the Department of Planning, Housing and Infrastructure (DPHI) and council’s consultants. Council had submitted its TOD Alternative to DPHI on 10 June 2025, followed by proposed amendments to the Ku-ring-gai Local Environmental Plan 2015 and the relevant State Environmental Planning Policy on 12 June 2025. This submission stemmed from Council’s 5 June 2025 resolution to adopt draft Local Environmental Planning maps and clauses, together with a revised implementation strategy, for the purpose of preparing a SEPP to implement the alternative plan.

Unfortunately, before the council’s alternative TOD was adopted NSW Planning Minister Paul Scully ‘saved’ every SSD lodged before the 13 June 2025. A number of these projects sit outside the new TOD precincts and continue to be approved under the original, more permissive controls. The proposals will heavily impact neighbouring properties – loss of sunlight, privacy, outlook and tree canopy, heritage conservation areas, heritage items and add pressure on streets and infrastructure that the TOD Alternative Plan was specifically designed to protect.

Currently there are thirty (30) Ku-ring-gai TOD State Significant Developments (SSDs) in the process of being determined by the Department of Planning, Heritage and Infrastructure and seven (7) TOD applications are being determined by Ku-ring-gai Council and Sydney North Planning Panel. FOKE has submitted responses to a great majority of the development proposals as well as a number of the TOD SSDs which have been subsequently amended following their response to submissions.

Eight (8) TOD SSDs have been approved since December 2025 namely 3-9 Park Avenue, Gordon; 3A, 3B, 5A and 7 Burgoyne Street and 4 Burgoyne Lane and 1 and 3 Pearson Avenue, Gordon; 9-21 Beaconsfield Road, Lindfield; 2-4 Larkin Street and 1-5 Pockley Avenue, Roseville; 2-16 Pockley Avenue, Roseville; 12-16 Bent Street, Lindfield; 27-29 Tryon Road, Lindfield and 5-7 Middle Harbour Road, Lindfield (Land & Environment Court Appeal decision).

Considerable community concerns have arisen in responding to the ‘saved’ TOD development proposals. Considerations such as impacts on people, cumulative impacts on neighbourhoods such as loss of solar access and privacy, heritage, environment, traffic and infrastructure being key issues. The multi-storey proposals will have a dramatic impact on local character, neighbourhoods, amenity and lifestyle.

We question whether the TOD 30% bonus increase in height of buildings in allowing so called affordable rental units will be ‘affordable’ for low-income families. One-bedroom apartments are being sold off the plan from $900,000 – $1 million and rise by approximately a $1million per additional bedroom. We question why the government has only mandated the affordable housing for just 15 years and not in perpetuity. Unfortunately, we are seeing that TOD In-fill affordable dwellings are too often assigned to the least liveable units that have little or no solar access or cross flow ventilation with some of the dwellings planned below natural ground level or as council refers to them as ‘subterranean’ dwellings.

With the luxury 8-10 storey residential apartments being designed with more family sized 2, 3 and 4 bedroom apartments the lack of provision of suitable private open spaces for children to safely play, ride a bicycle or to kick a ball is evident. Private open space provisions in these residential apartment buildings is being planned on the rooftop of these buildings being areas totally unsuitable as play areas for children. The government’s legislation needs to be changed to address the needs of families with children living in TOD high-rise apartments.

The broader reform agenda of the NSW Government discussed below, concentrates power, weakens consultation and treats the planning system as a delivery mechanism for

development, rather than a framework for shaping liveable, distinctive and resilient

communities.

Read FOKE’s full Report 2025-2026:

August 2026