News · Development · Cameron Park
A thousand new homes at Cameron Park will pay for sports fields at Edgeworth. Six people downloaded the agreement
Lake Macquarie City Council was recommended on 27 July to enter a planning agreement with developer Winten covering a subdivision at 10 and 10C Woodford Street, Cameron Park. It requires $24,365.73 per residential lot, indexed to Sydney CPI, paid before each lot's subdivision certificate. That money does not stay in Cameron Park: most of the named spending is two new sports fields at Edgeworth and four hardcourts at West Wallsend. We read the agreement and the council report in full.
A voluntary planning agreement is how a council converts a large approval into public infrastructure. The developer offers money, land or works; the council accepts; the offer becomes a condition of building. They are public documents, and they are where you find out what a subdivision is actually worth to the suburb around it. This one has been sitting on the council's website since May.
What is being built
Development consent was granted on 9 January 2024 (DA/2087/2018/REV), and amended on 4 November 2025, for a subdivision of two lots into 1,079: 1,058 residential lots, three lots for future development, one lot for a future school, 16 public and drainage reserves including two local park sites, and one residue lot.
Condition 106 of that consent requires the developer to enter a planning agreement matching an offer it made on 13 October 2023. The agreement now before council is that offer in legal form. The developer is Winten (No 21) Pty Ltd, of North Sydney.
What it costs, per house
The agreement sets two payments, both charged on a per-residential-lot basis and both payable
prior to the issue of a Subdivision Certificate that creates the relevant Residential Lot
:
Monetary Contribution 1 of $12,364.05 and Monetary Contribution 2 of
$12,001.68. Both are indexed to the Consumer Price Index (All Groups) for Sydney, against
a June 2025 base. Together that is $24,365.73 per lot before indexation.
On the agreement's own figure of 1,058 residential lots, that is about $25.8
million. The council report puts the agreement's reach higher, saying it
applies to 1,118 lots
, which would be about $27.2 million. We cannot reconcile the two
numbers from the public documents and have not guessed which governs; the per-lot figures are the
ones the agreement actually sets, and they are not in dispute.
One thing worth understanding: these contributions are instead of the standard section 7.11 development contributions, not on top of them. The council report says so directly.
Where the money goes, and it is not Cameron Park
Monetary Contribution 1 is tied to named projects. The council must spend it on two new sports fields at 10 Turnbull Street, Edgeworth, including car parking and amenities, and on two new hardcourts plus the upgrade of two existing hardcourts, with floodlights, at Gregory Park, 19 Hyndes Street, West Wallsend.
Monetary Contribution 2 is different, and it is roughly half the money. The agreement says the
council shall spend it on any public amenities or public services located within the area
delineated by the black outline in Schedule 7 within the Lake Macquarie local government area, at
LMCC's absolute discretion
. That is a mapped catchment, not a project list.
Separately from the cash, the developer must dedicate and deliver two local parks with
playgrounds and a shared pathway. Those are on site, and the council report says they will be
progressively delivered by the developer as the development proceeds
.
None of this is unusual or improper. Contributions are routinely pooled across a catchment, because a sports field serves more than one suburb and you cannot build a quarter of one. It is worth saying plainly all the same: a buyer in Cameron Park is paying about $24,000 towards facilities, and the two named ones are in other suburbs.
The part that should give a council pause
The draft agreement was exhibited on the council's Shape Lake Mac site from 8 May to 7 June 2026, which the report notes is slightly longer than the 28-day legal minimum. Notice went to 6,233 newsletter subscribers and to neighbouring landowners.
The project page recorded 424 visits. The draft agreement itself was downloaded six times. Three submissions were received.
Our view, labelled as such. Six downloads is not a failure of the council's process, which did more than the law required. It is a fair measure of how much a 55-page legal instrument communicates to the public it is written for, even when 6,233 people are told it exists. If a council wants genuine comment on what a subdivision buys the neighbourhood, the document to exhibit is the one-page map of what gets built and where, not the deed. That map exists: it is Figure 1 of the council report.
What happens next, and what we could not confirm
Council staff recommended entering the agreement. The report sets out the alternative, declining it, and notes that would leave the developer unable to satisfy the condition of its consent, which makes the recommendation close to the only workable option once the consent was granted.
The meeting was held on 27 July. We cannot yet confirm what was resolved. Lake Macquarie does not publish standalone minutes; they appear inside the agenda of the following ordinary meeting, which is not yet posted. When it is, we will update this story with the resolution.
How we sourced this
We downloaded the 27 July 2026 Ordinary Council agenda (175 pages) and the planning agreement attachment (59 pages) from the council's business papers on 3 August 2026 and read both. Every figure and quotation above comes from those two documents. Item 26SP040 begins at page 132 of the agenda.
The lot-count discrepancy is reported rather than resolved: the agreement's recitals describe 1,058 residential lots within a 1,079-lot subdivision, while the council report says the agreement applies to 1,118 lots. The two dollar totals in this story are our own arithmetic on the agreement's stated per-lot figures, before indexation, and are given as approximations for that reason.
What we have not done. We have not sought comment from the council or the developer. We have not seen the three submissions, which are summarised in an attachment we did not obtain, nor Schedule 7's map beyond the council report's description of it. Nothing here suggests any impropriety by any party; a planning agreement is the ordinary statutory mechanism for this and the process followed exceeded the minimum exhibition period.
Sources
- Lake Macquarie City Council, Ordinary Council meeting agenda, 27 July 2026 (PDF, 175 pages, downloaded 3 August 2026): item 26SP040 from page 132, the recommendation, the exhibition dates and engagement figures (424 visits, six downloads, three submissions, 6,233 subscribers), the statement that the agreement applies to 1,118 lots and is instead of section 7.11 contributions, and the description of the named works.
- Lake Macquarie City Council and Winten (No 21) Pty Ltd, draft Planning Agreement under section 7.4, 10 and 10C Woodford Street Cameron Park (PDF, 59 pages, attachment to item 26SP040, downloaded 3 August 2026): the two monetary contributions and their amounts, clause 4.1.1 on payment before each subdivision certificate, clause 4.2 on CPI indexation against a June 2025 base, clause 4.3 on how each contribution may be spent, the development description and consent references, and the local parks and shared pathway obligations.
- Lake Macquarie City Council, Shape Lake Mac: the engagement platform on which the draft agreement was exhibited from 8 May to 7 June 2026, per the council report.
- The Hunter Ledger, our earlier report from a Lake Macquarie planning agenda: how this masthead reads council business papers.
Buying at Cameron Park, or involved in this agreement? Tell us and we will check it against the documents and log the outcome here.