Vincent Mayor takes to Twitter to slam Property Council report as ‘sloppy’ and ‘simplistic’

CITY of Vincent Mayor John Carey has criticised a Property Council of Australia report released this week, calling it “sloppy” and “simplistic.”

The State Labor candidate for Perth took to Twitter to air his grievance with the report, which gave the City an 11.3 point score out of 20 for its implementation of planning schemes.

The report showed 59 per cent of planning applications were processed in 60 days or less and that its planning scheme was 18 years old.

“The @WA_Property report on local government planning is wrong for @CityofVincent: our Planning Scheme was reviewed and is still waiting for approval,” Mr Carey tweeted.

“I strongly support benchmarking of local government and Vincent must do better, but @WA_Property report is sloppy and simplistic.”

He said it would be two years in December that the City’s new town planning scheme had been waiting for approval.

The independently compiled report revealed only two of 29 Perth local governments were up to scratch with planning performance.

A Property Council of Australia spokeswoman said the information gathered was provided by the councils.

“The Mayor of Vincent has taken issue with the report stating the City of Vincent has not reviewed its planning scheme in the last five years,” she said.

“The City has conducted a review. However this review has not been finalised as it is awaiting approval by the Western Australian Planning Commission (WAPC); this has been pending for quite some time.

“However until approved by the WAPC the review process is not complete and therefore the City of Vincent does not have a completed review of its planning scheme.

“Speeding up the review process at the WAPC was one of the key recommendations of the report and many councils would have ranked higher if that was the case, as there are currently a number of councils awaiting approval.”

Cambridge came in last on the list.