The Sunshine Coast Regional Council is calling for community feedback to inform their future plans.

Under the banner ‘our place our future’, Council has developed a Statement of Proposals which sets out a vision for the Sunshine Coast.  Council says ‘The Statement of Proposals, together with a series of discussion papers, policies and strategies, helps form the planning scheme and other related action plans that will shape our future’.

Council has prepared this  fact sheet regarding the entire process.

Recognising the importance of community input into this process, the Noosa News and the Noosa Biosphere Reserve have cooperated in producing a submission that you can lodge directly with the Sunshine Coast Regional Council yourself.

This is Noosa’s chance to collectively say “we value our region, the environment and our way of life, please maintain these values into the future”.

Each and every resident or business can have their say, we certainly encourage you to write your own individual responses to Council.

For those of you who don’t necessarily have the time to draft your own letter, we have drafted a letter that you can download, print, fill in your details and send directly – no stamp required.  Download the letter here: Public submission - Our Future.doc

This ‘form response’ has been drafted to ensure that our Noosa Biosphere Reserve continues to be a place where people live in vibrant, sustainable and unique village style communities that have a harmonious and respectful relationship with Noosa Biosphere’s outstanding natural ecosystems.

Submissions are due by Monday the 7^th of December.

Your voice will count and we need your support in carrying the community’s wishes through into the new planning scheme.

FURTHER BACKGROUND INFORMATION:

The Noosa Biosphere Reserve was declared by UNESCO in September 2007 under their program ‘Man and the Biosphere’ in recognition of the commitment of the community to environmental excellence and the pursuit of ecologically sustainable development. UNESCO specifically recognised in the Noosa Biosphere Reserve a sophisticated level of human settlement and a high level of interrelationship with the natural environment as well as a strong sense of community involvement and community co-ordination over a broad range of human settlement and natural environment issues.

The Noosa Biosphere Nomination 2007 particularly identified managing urban growth in a sustainable manner and developing a culture of responsible stewardship by all community members as one of the key drivers of the Noosa Biosphere proposal.

Noosa is both an internationally recognised tourist destination and one of the most desirable places in the world to live. This status has been achieved as a result of good fortune in terms of climate, amenity and natural resources and good management in terms of how consecutive generations have cared for the place and developed a set of community values and planning principles. The Noosa community is renowned for its creativity, innovation, vision and entrepreneurship where sustainability underpins excellence.

This community vision has been crystallised into planning schemes, which aimed to manage how Noosa developed – the ‘Town Plans’.  In recent times these have been the Strategic Plan, and its successor the Noosa Plan.  Much is written and debated about how this care for the way Noosa developed has occurred and who is responsible, but over time this is not really important.  The important thing is that there have been leaders that have come forward, and the community has come together and supported planning schemes that met their aspirations about the sort of place Noosa should be.

Following amalgamation, the State Government recognised this through the Iconic Places Legislation.  This legislation and the Noosa Biosphere Reserve have effectively enshrined the boundaries of the former Noosa Shire.

Many of the iconic values that have made Noosa what it is today are already protected under the Iconic Queensland Places Act 2008.  For Noosa they include a range of protected Planning Provisions covering all localities within the Noosa Biosphere Reserve.  They include provisions such as building height, site cover, gross floor area, plot ratio, and signage.  There are also planning scheme policies relating to, landscaping, public open space contributions, and ecological assessment guidelines.

Now we are at a time when a new Planning Scheme must be developed for the whole of the Sunshine Coast Region by the Sunshine Coast Regional Council, and they are seeking community input.