Regional Planning - Department of Local Government and Planning

Regional Planning

Regional planning plays a key role in helping Queensland meet the challenges associated with managing rapid growth, population change, economic development, and protecting the environment and infrastructure provision across multiple local government areas. It is a core element of Qplan - Queensland’s new planning, development and building system.

Regional plans operate in conjunction with other statutory planning tools, including state planning policies, local government planning schemes, state planning regulatory provisions and development assessment processes. The Qplan framework allows regional plans to be drafted as statutory instruments under the Sustainable Planning Act 2009.

Statutory regional plans generally take precedence over most planning instruments, however where required, state planning regulatory provisions can override the regional plan. Non-statutory plans provide strategic advice and direction, however they do not prevail over other planning instruments.

Regional plans identify:

desired regional outcomes
policies and actions for achieving these desired regional outcomes
the future regional land use pattern
regional infrastructure provision to service the future regional land use pattern
key regional environmental, economic and cultural resources to be preserved, maintained or developed.

Regional plans are developed in partnership with local councils, the community and stakeholders.

Several Queensland regions have non-statutory plans in place. These plans have been developed in close partnership with local councils, communities and business and industry representatives. These plans were developed before the commencement of statutory regional plans and do not have legislative power. The department will work with local communities to review some of the non-statutory plans to bring them into the statutory framework.

To assist people with completing development applications that comply with regional planning requirements, Smart eDA is constantly being updated to ensure all requirements are accurately reflected.

Regional plans developed under the Integrated Planning Act 1997 remain in force under the Sustainable Planning Act 2009. As plans are updated, they will be modified to reflect the new Act.

The map Regional Planning Projects in Queensland ( PDF icon 637 KB) provides an overview of all regions for which regional plans currently exist including the location and local government areas covered by existing statutory and non-statutory regional plans. A description of the maps in particular regional plans can be found at Regional plan maps.