Customer story: Western Australia Department of Planning, Lands and Heritage

Land use permits and development applications

The Government of Western Australia oversees the western 33% of Australia – making it the nation's largest state, occupying almost 1 million square miles.

In 2017, the state government created the Department of Planning, Lands and Heritage (DPLH) – a single department to bring 'all land use and heritage responsibilities under the one umbrella to shape the future of our cities, regions and towns.' DPLH is responsible for 'planning and managing land and heritage for all Western Australians'.

As part of its remit, DPLH operates the state processes for land amendments and rezoning in Western Australia. Zones are a crucial tool for managing land use.

Local governments prepare local planning schemes, setting out how they intend to develop their areas. Those areas are then classified into the appropriate zones for the proposed land use. Development can only go ahead in land that has been designated for the approved category of usage – so, whenever local plans change, an amendment or rezoning application must first be made to DPLH.

Common reasons for land use amendment and rezoning applications include:

• residential development
• water catchments and special controls
• strategic industrial improvement

One system for all land use permits

A crucial part of this application process is opening them up to public comment and input. DPLH publish information about proposed land use amendments, and invite anyone who might be affected by the application to make their views known. DPLH runs multiple significant consultations on these kinds of applications every year.

In 2014, DPLH adopted an online system to centralise and standardise its public engagement activity around land use and rezoning applications. Since then, the Department has used Citizen Space to run all of its public consultations – making it easy to publish, manage and organise their engagement activities, and easy for the public to find the relevant applications, in one place.

A simpler process for everyone

Switching to Citizen Space has made the land use consultation process faster and more convenient for both DPLH and the public. DPLH staff are able to create and deploy a standardised template for the consultations, making all the relevant information available to the public at the point of response. And respondents can complete the end-to-end process – of discovering, understanding, commenting on and receiving feedback about land use applications – in a single, straightforward interaction.