The Growth Areas Team

The Growth Areas Team (GAT) was established in 2021 in response to growing demands for affordable land and housing in rapidly expanding parts of South East Queensland.

The team's remit is to help ‘unlock’ land to facilitate housing and well-planned community outcomes.  Many growth fronts in South East Queensland pose significant challenges that need to be overcome before housing can be approved and constructed. These challenges include:

• ‘land fragmentation’ which requires developers to negotiate with multiple land owners to assemble parcels of land large enough to support development applications for urban development.
• requirements for land use and infrastructure planning to be in place to ensure that incremental approvals fit together over time to develop cohesive neighbourhoods and communities.
• absence of land use and infrastructure planning that is necessary to facilitate the conversion of these areas into well planned, liveable urban communities.

The Growth Areas Team is working closely with local governments, state agencies and utility providers to help bring land to the market and to resolve these challenges through the development of strategies to mobilise land supply and housing outcomes on a range of growth fronts.

Key projects the Growth Areas Team is working on:

• Growth Acceleration Fund (GAF) – following a state government budget commitment, GAT has established a $35 million co-investment loan funding scheme to support the delivery of essential infrastructure in South East Queensland growth fronts.
• Priority Growth Areas legislation– GAT is working closely with the state planning agency on the development of legislative amendments to the Planning Act 2016 to establish new planning powers for mobilising outcomes in growth fronts.
• Redland Housing Supply and Diversity Strategy – in response to the Ministerial Direction, GAT is undertaking a Housing Supply and Diversity Strategy to facilitate housing choice and diversity in the Redland region.
• Caboolture West – GAT, in partnership with Moreton Bay Regional Council completed the Caboolture West Interim Structure Plan to pave the way for fast-tracked assessment of 13,000 new homes across 600 hectares of land earmarked for residential development over the next 15 years.
• Underutilised urban footprint (UUF) – GAT completed the review of the development capacity of 75 UUF areas identified in the Shaping SEQ regional plan. This work identified areas that require assistance to ‘unlock’ land in the short and medium term, while providing up to date information for the ongoing monitoring of land supply availability in the SEQ region.  GAT will now work to identify the barriers and interventions that may be required.