The National Retirement Living Report Card: A Health Check on Australia’s Planning Systems

Australians are getting older. By 2040, there will be close to 3.5 million Australians aged over 75 years. As our population grows older, the need for age-friendly accommodation becomes increasingly urgent.

Amidst a housing supply crisis, we need planning systems that enable Australians to live in housing that suits their needs, including retirement villages.

The National Retirement Living Report Card, prepared by the Retirement Living Council (RLC) and Urbis, provides a health check on our country’s planning systems, assessing their fitness for this important industry.

As our ageing population continues to grow, it's more important than ever that retirement living is addressed in strategic plans and policies by state and local governments.
— Kylie Newcombe

Why a Planning Report Card?

The report card serves as a tool to launch and support conversations with policymakers and authorities. It highlights the issues and, more importantly, the solutions to make our planning systems ‘retirement ready’.

The final scores are informed by three components: a survey, industry and planner engagement, and the 2017 Report Card scores.

The Highlights

Standout Jurisdiction: South Australia

South Australia (SA) stands out for its progress towards a more modern system. New legislation has replaced and consolidated 72 plans into a single Planning and Design Code that applies statewide. This has significantly reduced the number of zones, provided definitions specific to retirement villages, and improved pathways for complex applications.

Bonus Provisions

Bonus provisions are available for retirement living, though not in state-based policies with application across the jurisdiction. These bonuses have been successfully leveraged in Queensland and Victoria and are written into the State Environmental Planning Policy (SEPP) in New South Wales (NSW).

State Pathways

Most jurisdictions have state planning pathways for developments above set thresholds. The addition of the State Significant Development (SSD) pathway in NSW, specific to retirement villages co-located with aged care, is a positive development.

Willing Authorities

Sometimes, the barriers in the planning systems can come down to the consenting authority’s attitudes. We’ve heard of councils working well with the industry to facilitate an outcome that they see as positive for the community.

The Lowlights

Understanding

Retirement living is sometimes interchangeable with aged care by authorities, and often the community. Consequently, developments are forced to comply with requirements that are not relevant to the retirement living product. As an industry, we must do what we can to educate authorities.

Delays

Timeframes for assessment can range from a few months to more than two years. From a sample of 77 retirement village development applications, 67% took more than 12 months from lodging an application to receiving determination. Of which 23% took more than 2 years. These delays need to be factored into feasibilities and can ultimately derail projects.

Innovation

The retirement housing product has characteristics unique to it. As customer needs change or a site has limitation that require a different approach, the planning systems need to have flexibility built in to get the best outcome.

Overall Scorecard

The jurisdictions are ranked in order based on the overall scores. The overall score range from high to low is narrow, only 16 points. It is not night and day between 1st and 7th ranked.

2024 Rank	Jurisdiction	Score
1.	South Australia	58.8
2.	New South Wales	51.2
3.	Australian Capital Territory	50.9
4.	Victoria	45.8
5.	Queensland	43.2
6.	Tasmania	42.8
7.	Western Australia	42.7

A promising starting point could be setting explicit targets for retirement living, backed by a consistent set of controls and design guidance for application across the state.
— Kylie Newcombe

Moving Forward

To improve the ability to compete, state governments should review zones and identify other zones where retirement living could be permitted, where residential is not.

To improve understanding, a consistent set of controls and design guidance at the state level for retirement living should be defined.

To improve efficiency, departments and councils need to set about changes regarding timeframes. An impactful change is a simple move to mandate a 20-day timeframe for responses from referral agencies and the authority to declare ‘deemed to satisfy’ if responses are not provided in the timeframe.

In summary, we haven’t moved on too far since the 2017 Report Card with limited progress on specific provisions for retirement living. We can see how to move forward in a positive direction taking ideas from a mix of jurisdictions that have already proven to be effective.