Local Government Capacity and Land Use Planning for Natural Hazards: A Comparative Evaluation of Australian Local Government Areas

Figures & data

Table 1. Distribution of Local Government Areas (LGAs) among remoteness classes in Australian States and Territories

			Number of LGAs
Category	Class	Definition	NSW	VIC	QLD	WA	SA	TAS	NT	ACT	Total
Metropolitan	Urban Capital City (UCC)	The LGA associated with the central city of a metropolis	1	1	1	1	1	1	1	1	8
	Urban Development (UD)	Urban LGAs within metropolitan boundaries	31	22	0	21	14	0	0		88
	Urban Fringe (UF)	LGAs on the fringe of metropolitan areas, often with high rates of growth	11	11	3	9	6	4	1		45
Regional City	Urban Rural (UR)	LGAs centred on a major regional city	38	20	27	9	9	5	3		111
Rural and Remote	Rural Agricultural (RA)	LGAs comprised of agricultural land and townships	69	25	9	75	38	19	0		235
	Remote (RT)	LGAs in remote locations	2	0	31	23	0	0	12		68
Total			152	79	71	138	68	29	17	1	555

Table 2. Protocol for evaluating the quality and coverage of planning policy for natural hazards across all Local Government Areas in Australia. Each item was coded as one of three options: 0 (no policy provision); 1 (some policy provision) or 2 (thorough policy provision), giving an overall maximum possible planning policy score of 14

Policy levelDocument type used	Protocol items	Maximum score
State Government State policy for hazard mapping and development controls	1. Does state policy require mapping of local bushfire and flood inundation? 2. Does state policy require controls for bushfire and flood inundation in local plans?	4
Planning Region Regional plans with hazards provisions	3. Does regional strategy stipulate planning principles for hazard risk?	2
Local Council Local hazard controls and hazard maps	4. Is local bushfire prone land mapped? 5. Is local land prone to flood inundation mapped? 6. Are there local development controls for bushfire prone areas? 7. Are there local development controls for flood prone areas?	8
Total		14

Table 3. Overview of planning policy scores in Australian States and Territories. The mean planning policy score was computed from all LGAs within a State/Territory. The distribution of planning policy scores among LGAs was computed as the number of LGAs in each State/Territory with each planning policy score (4–14). No planning policy scores between 0–3 were observed

	State/Territory
Item	NSW	VIC	QLD	WA	SA	TAS	NT	ACT
Mean planning policy score
Mean planning policy score	11.68	13.18	11.31	10.02	11.84	11.66	6.53	14
Planning policy score distribution (Number of LGAs)
Planning policy score 4							1
Planning policy score 5			2
Planning policy score 6			5		2		10
Planning policy score 7	1		3				1
Planning policy score 8	9		4	40			5
Planning policy score 9	8		1	22	3
Planning policy score 10	23	1	7	28	7	8
Planning policy score 11	26	13	6	15	10	3
Planning policy score 12	32	7	18	14	12	10
Planning policy score 13	17	8	1	14	34	7
Planning policy score 14	36	50	24	5		1		1

Table 4. Scores for items in the three policy levels of the assessment protocol. Items contributing to each policy level are explained in Table 2. Item scores at the State Government level are n = 1, while other policy levels are means of component LGAs

	Item scores
	State Government		Planning Region	Local Council
State/Territory	Hazard map (Item 1)	Hazard controls (Item 2)	Hazard principles (Item 3)	Bushfire (Items 4&6)	Flood (Items 5&7)	Local Total (Items 4–7)
NSW	2	2	2.00	2.11	3.57	5.68
VIC	2	2	2.00	3.54	3.63	7.17
QLD	2	2	1.15	3.06	3.10	6.16
WA	2	2	1.14	2.83	2.06	4.89
SA	1	2	2.00	3.37	3.47	6.84
TAS	2	2	1.72	2.55	3.38	5.93
NT	1	1	0.65	0.00	3.88	3.88
ACT	2	2	2.00	4.00	4.00	8.00
National mean	1.75	1.88	1.58	2.68	3.39	6.07

Figure 1. Distribution of local-level (a) bushfire and (b) flood hazard mapping (map) and development control (control) scores across Australian States and Territories. Values show the proportion of LGAs in each state coded as 0 (no provision), 1 (partial provision) or 2 (thorough provision) for the relevant item. Items are explained in Table 2. The ACT was not assessed because it only consists of one LGA.

Figure 2. Planning policy score distribution among population density quintiles.

Figure 3. Distribution of planning policy scores among metropolitan, regional city and rural/remote classes of LGAs. Remoteness classes are described in Table 1.

Figure 4. Council staffing and planning policy scores. (a) Average council FTE staff per remoteness class. (b) Planning policy score distribution among staffing levels. Remoteness classes are explained in Table 1. Brisbane was excluded from the UCC class, as the LGA covers much of the Brisbane metropolitan area, and is an outlier with >7000 FTE staff.