The New South Wales Gov­ern­ment has amend­ed Local Envi­ron­men­tal Plans to replace Busi­ness and Indus­tri­al Zones with new Employ­ment Zones’. 

The changes have been a long time in the mak­ing. Orig­i­nal­ly devel­oped under the for­mer Min­is­ter for Plan­ning back in May of 2021, the reforms fol­low the Pro­duc­tiv­i­ty Com­mis­sion’s 2021 White Paper Reboot­ing the Econ­o­my’ which rec­om­mend­ed ratio­nal­i­sa­tion of exist­ing busi­ness and indus­tri­al zones by reduc­ing the over­all num­ber of these zones and broad­en­ing their per­mis­si­ble activities. 

The inten­tion of the new zones is to pro­mote flex­i­bil­i­ty of land use and sup­port pro­duc­tiv­i­ty and jobs growth. They seek to achieve this by pro­vid­ing areas that have a diver­si­ty of retail, busi­ness, office and accom­mo­da­tion uses to increase employ­ment oppor­tu­ni­ties in acces­si­ble loca­tions. The new zones also aim to pro­vide suit­able areas for indus­tri­al activ­i­ties and will sep­a­rate heavy indus­try from oth­er land uses to min­imise envi­ron­men­tal impacts. 

Busi­ness and Indus­tri­al zones have been replaced with five new employ­ment zones, to be called: 

  • E1 Local Centre
  • E2 Com­mer­cial Centre
  • E3 Pro­duc­tiv­i­ty Support
  • E4 Gen­er­al Indus­tri­al; and
  • E5 Heavy Industrial

Three addi­tion­al zones have also been cre­at­ed to accom­mo­date land uses in exist­ing busi­ness and indus­tri­al zones that are not pro­duc­tiv­i­ty related: 

  • MU1 Mixed Use
  • W4 Work­ing Water­front; and
  • SP4 Enter­prise

The amend­ments were made on 16 Decem­ber 2022 but the new zones will not take effect until 26 April 2023

A com­par­i­son table show­ing the exist­ing zones and the new zones can be found here

If you would like to repub­lish this arti­cle, it is gen­er­al­ly approved, but pri­or to doing so please con­tact the Mar­ket­ing team at marketing@​swaab.​com.​au. This arti­cle is not legal advice and the views and com­ments are of a gen­er­al nature only. This arti­cle is not to be relied upon in sub­sti­tu­tion for detailed legal advice.

Publications

Match­ing Par­ent­ing Orders to Risk: Craft­ing orders to prop­er­ly address the dan­gers in a fam­i­ly law matter

The focus of any par­ent­ing mat­ter being dealt with in the Fed­er­al Cir­cuit and Fam­i­ly Court of Aus­tralia is what…

Amend­ments to NCC 2022 com­menc­ing on 1 May 2025

Back­groundThe Aus­tralian Build­ing Codes Board (ABCB), a joint ini­tia­tive of the Com­mon­wealth and state and ter­ri­to­ry gov­ern­ments togeth­er with the build­ing…

Choose Your Own Respon­dent in Gen­er­al Pro­tec­tions Dis­missal Disputes

Usu­al­ly when one par­ty is tak­ing legal pro­ceed­ings against anoth­er the respon­dent enti­ty needs to be care­ful­ly iden­ti­fied. It can…

In the News

Press Release | New Part­ner Appoint­ment — Mark Glynn

With over two decades in the indus­try, Mark is a recog­nised front-end con­struc­tion lawyer spe­cial­ist with­in the build­ing and con­struc­tion indus­try. Mark…

Press Release | New Asso­ciate Appoint­ment — Hugo Mahony

“As we con­tin­ue to expand in line with our strate­gic vision, Hugo’s deep knowl­edge and expe­ri­ence in Com­mer­cial, Cor­po­rate, IP…

Michael Byrnes is quot­ed in the arti­cle, Police and Safe­Work are inves­ti­gat­ing MAFS, but the show keeps win­ning the rat­ings race”, pub­lished on ABC News on 6 April 2025

Michael Byrnes is quot­ed in the arti­cle, ​“Police and Safe­Work are inves­ti­gat­ing MAFS, but the show keeps win­ning the rat­ings…

Sign up for our Newsletter

*Mandatory information