By ANGIE WHITE and LAURA WILLIAMS

The conversation around local demand for housing has seen little change since it was identified, with few local towns having secured many more houses since 2020.

New funding for the Bogan shire is part of the long road to expanding the town. 

Having received $163,535 as part of the Regional Housing Strategic Planning Fund from the NSW Government, the funds won’t go as far as to get houses up, but will lay the logistical foundations of how it might be achieved.

“This will go towards investigating additional housing opportunities in our LGA,” Bogan Shire Mayor Glen Neill said. 

“We’ve had quite a lot of discussions about this in the last couple of years…if we can get the appropriate processes happening to be able to use it, it will be a very handy tool.”

For the Bogan shire, growth in housing areas will be successful if there is growth in industrial areas too. 

“It’s been pretty tight for buildings in our town on industrial land, we haven’t got a lot of that,” Cr Neill said. 

“There’s not much point extending the houses if you can’t expand business as well, so that will be the main focus.”

With the new funding for planning and recent approval for housing divisions, new housing supply is looking like it will eventually arrive for the Bogan shire. 

“Getting grants is one thing and then finding the land areas is another story in itself. None of it is straight forward.”

“We seem to have a really complicated system if you want to change the land use or do anything like that.”

“The existing subdivision that we hope to get underway shortly, that’s been a two year process.”

Bogan Shire Council General Manager Derek Francis said that this funding should make the next part of the process more efficient.

“Advice from a Town Planning consultant was that the Department of Planning would look at this more favourably if we presented it as part of an all-encompassing housing strategy and staff applied for a grant to be able to do this late last year,” he said.  

“The creation of a housing strategy should enable us to strategically plan for future housing development, including identifying land that might be suitable, but ultimately it is up to the owners of that land and to developers to bring more new housing onto the market,” according to Mr. Francis. 

The recently announced funding was spread amongst 16 councils, and is expected to help deliver 24,000 new regional homes. 

The funding is for new housing strategies, preparation of infrastructure and servicing plans, and amendments to local environmental plans to bring forward the construction of more ‘diverse and affordable housing’, according to the NSW Government. 

“It’s tremendous that there is this funding, otherwise it would have to come out of council’s coffers,” Cr Neill said. 

“The only way our town is growing is to get more people in it, so if it gives us an opportunity to do that then I’m happy.”

Brewarrina Shire Council also received $75,000 in funding from the same grant round.