Coffs wants to delete one number from its planning rules. It would put about 5,000 blocks in play

Council endorsed the proposal at its meeting on 23 July. It now goes to the NSW Department of Planning, Housing and Infrastructure for gateway determination, which is the state's decision on whether a council's planning proposal proceeds to exhibition at all. Nothing changes for any landowner until that happens and the amendment is made.

What is being removed is narrow and specific. Dual occupancy, two dwellings on one lot, is already a permissible use in R2. The restriction is the lot size: at least 800 square metres. Delete the minimum and the permission stops being theoretical for the many Coffs blocks that sit under it. The council's own estimate of how many is about 5,000.

Mayor Nikki Williams framed it as supply and shape at once. We see this as an enabler for a greater variety and supply of affordable housing in existing neighbourhoods, she said. "In particular the change would promote infill development, supporting a compact urban form to help reduce urban sprawl. It's about looking to encourage development in established urban areas already serviced by infrastructure, community facilities and public spaces."

That second half is the part worth holding on to. A regional council adding housing has two options: outward, onto new land that needs roads, water and sewer built for it, or inward, onto lots that already have all of it. This proposal is the inward one, and it is cheap in a way greenfield release is not, because the infrastructure is already paid for and in the ground.

The design controls are the other half of the deal

The proposal is paired with an amendment to the Coffs Harbour Development Control Plan, which is where the council would set what these dual occupancies have to look like. City Planning and Communities Director Ian Fitzgibbon said the DCP work would cover built form, streetscape presentation, landscaping and residential amenity, describing it as an approach which would balance the need for greater housing diversity while staying in keeping with the prevailing character of a neighbourhood.

The suggested provisions, as published, are that development sites have sufficient width for two dwellings plus vehicular access, parking, setbacks and landscaping; that development does not create unreasonable impacts on neighbours through access, manoeuvring and parking; that street-facing facades and front setbacks are not visually dominated by cars and driveways; and that each dwelling in a dual occupancy is recognisable as a distinct dwelling.

Read those together and they are answering the objection before it is raised. The standard complaint about removing a minimum lot size is not that two houses exist where one did, it is what a too-narrow block produces: two front doors behind a wall of parked cars, no garden, and a streetscape that reads as one large building rather than two homes. Every one of the four provisions is aimed at that. Whether they achieve it depends entirely on the detail, which has not been published yet, and a DCP is guidance a consent authority weighs rather than a hard prohibition.

The same week, the council next door did the opposite

This is the second regional housing-rules decision on the Mid North Coast in as many days, and they went in opposite directions. On 22 July, Nambucca Valley Council was due to set the first building-height limits and minimum lot sizes for its own Valla growth area, the land it owns and has been readying since 2012, and forward them to the Minister for Planning. It deferred the item, unanimously, with no reason recorded in the minutes. The next day, Coffs endorsed a proposal to widen where housing is allowed on land that is already serviced.

The two councils are not comparable in scale and the two decisions are not the same kind of decision, so this is not a scoreboard. But it is a useful contrast for anyone trying to understand why regional housing supply moves slowly. Valla is the greenfield path: council owns the land, has been preparing it for fourteen years, and the rules that would let anyone build on it are still not made. Coffs is the infill path: no new land, no new pipes, one number deleted from an existing instrument. The infill option is the faster of the two by a wide margin, and it is still months of state process away from changing anything.

Why the council has to do this itself

The obvious question is why a council is amending its own lot-size rule when the NSW Government has spent two years rewriting housing controls. The answer is in the geography of those reforms, and it is worth setting out because it applies to every council on this coast.

The Low and Mid-Rise Housing Policy, part of State Environmental Planning Policy (Housing) 2021, came in two stages. Stage 1, from 1 July 2024, permitted dual occupancies and semi-detached homes in the R2 low density residential zone across all of NSW. That is the state-wide part, and it is why dual occupancy is already permissible in suburban Coffs.

Stage 2, from 28 February 2025, is the part that did not come here. It introduced the new development standards, including a minimum lot size of 450 square metres for a dual occupancy, but only inside designated low and mid-rise housing areas, which are residential zones within 800 metres walking distance of a nominated town centre or train or light rail station. Those areas exist in four regions: Greater Sydney, the Central Coast, the Lower Hunter and Newcastle, and Illawarra-Shoalhaven. The Mid North Coast is not among them.

So the state handed this region the permission without the standard. In a suburb of Newcastle inside one of those areas, a 450 square metre block can carry a dual occupancy because the state says so and the council's own minimum is switched off. In Coffs Harbour the state's permission applies but its lot-size standard does not, which leaves the council's own 800 square metre minimum as the only number that matters. That is the number this planning proposal deletes.

Two things follow that are worth being precise about. Deleting the minimum entirely is a more permissive position than the state's own standard: 450 square metres is a floor, and the proposal as endorsed leaves no LEP floor at all, with the other controls doing the work. And the comparison is not a criticism of either government. It is simply the mechanism, and it explains why the reform a reader has heard about for two years has not changed what is possible on their street.

Sources

1. NSW Department of Planning, Housing and Infrastructure, Low and Mid-Rise Housing Policy (read 1 August 2026): that Stage 1 from 1 July 2024 permitted dual occupancies and semi-detached homes in the R2 zone across all of NSW, that Stage 2 from 28 February 2025 applies in low and mid-rise housing areas within 800 metres walking distance of nominated centres and stations, and that those areas are located in Greater Sydney, the Central Coast, the Lower Hunter and Newcastle, and Illawarra-Shoalhaven.
2. NSW Department of Planning, Housing and Infrastructure, Summary of key provisions (read 1 August 2026): that dual occupancies are permitted with consent in R2 zones state-wide, and the Stage 2 non-discretionary standards for dual occupancies of a 450 square metre minimum lot size, 12 metre minimum lot width, 0.65:1 maximum floor space ratio, 9.5 metre maximum height and one car space per dwelling.
3. City of Coffs Harbour, Coffs Harbour seeks to unlock housing supply through rule change (media release, published 29 July 2026, read 30 July 2026): the planning proposal, the removal of the 800 square-metre minimum lot size in zone R2, the estimate of about 5,000 additional eligible properties, the 23 July Council endorsement, the referral to the NSW Department of Planning, Housing and Infrastructure for gateway determination, the associated Development Control Plan amendment and its four suggested provisions, and the quotations from Mayor Nikki Williams and City Planning and Communities Director Ian Fitzgibbon.
4. The Headland, Nambucca Valley Council deferred the rules for its own Valla growth area, and recorded no reason why: the 22 July 2026 deferral, sourced from that council's own business paper and minutes.

Updated 1 August 2026. Added the state context the council's announcement does not give: NSW made dual occupancy permissible in R2 across the whole state from 1 July 2024, but the accompanying 450 square metre lot-size standard arrived in February 2025 only for low and mid-rise housing areas in Greater Sydney, the Central Coast, the Lower Hunter and Newcastle, and Illawarra-Shoalhaven. The Mid North Coast is outside that geography, which is why the council's own 800 square metre minimum is still the binding number and why deleting it falls to the council. Nothing in the original was wrong and no figure changed.

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