News · Housing · Lake Macquarie

Lake Macquarie’s housing strategy points new homes at its centres. It gives none of them a number or a date

Adopted 11 votes to nil on 10 August, the strategy keeps the state’s target of 8,000 new homes by mid-2029 and its own projected shortfall of about 1,589, and says land already zoned for housing could take 46,800 more. It sends growth to the city’s centres. It does not say how many homes each should take or by when, and it changes no planning control on its own.

The Hunter Ledger · 4 October 2026 · every claim below links to its source

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The short answer. New homes are meant to go into the parts of Lake Macquarie that are already built up, and above all into its centres: Charlestown, Glendale, Belmont and Morisset at the top, then Cockle Creek and a ring of local centres. The city’s number is the state’s, 8,000 completed homes by mid-2029, and the strategy projects it will fall short. For someone wanting to build or buy, nothing changes on the day of adoption. The rules that already lift heights near stations and town centres are the state’s, and any later change to Lake Macquarie’s own controls will come through separate planning proposals, each of which now has to show it fits this strategy.

The council’s Development and Planning Standing Committee adopted the strategy on 10 August 2026, moved by Cr Adamthwaite and seconded by Cr Hannah, with all 11 councillors present voting for it and none against, according to the minutes printed in the 28 September council agenda (page 9). The adopted text is Attachment 1 to item 26DP006 in the committee’s 10 August agenda, headed Final Housing Strategy, 20 July 2026. We read every page of it, the staff report and the summary of submissions. Page numbers below are the strategy’s own; the agenda page is 31 higher.

Where the homes are meant to go

The strategy’s first priority is to Prioritise housing in well located existing urban areas (page 24). Its centres map (page 9) sorts the city into tiers carried over from the 2025 Local Strategic Planning Statement, and marks the places where state rules already allow taller, denser housing. We have transcribed it below.

The state rules are where the real uplift sits today. Transport Oriented Development provisions apply within 400 metres of Booragul, Cardiff, Morisset and Teralba stations, with an uplift in height and a mandatory provision of affordable housing of two per cent of floor area for large developments, and the Low and Mid-Rise Housing Policy applies within 800 metres of town centres including Morisset, Belmont, Jewells, Boolaroo, Cardiff Station and Charlestown (page 8). Both are state policies, not made by this strategy.

What the strategy adds is a rule for anyone seeking to rezone land. In the adopted text, Any request to amend the Lake Macquarie Local Environmental Plan 2014 must demonstrate consistency with the strategy. (page 10). It also keeps residential growth off land the city may need for jobs, about 78 hectares more by 2046 (page 25).

How many, and by when

The only dwelling number in the strategy is the city-wide one. Lake Macquarie’s target under the National Housing Accord is 8,000 new dwellings by mid-2029, and Based on current trends, projections show a shortfall of about 1,589 dwellings against this target. (page 19). Over the past decade the city added about 1,000 new homes each year (page 18). Hitting 8,000 in five years means 1,600 a year.

The strategy’s own chart does not match its own shortfall. Figure 8 puts the city at 91,862 dwellings in 2024, the target at 99,862 in 2029, and the projection at 98,003. That is a gap of 1,859, and 6,141 projected new homes, about 77 per cent of the target. The text’s 1,589 would mean about 6,411 homes and about 80 per cent. The two shortfalls use the same four digits in a different order, which may be a transposition, but the document does not say which figure is right. The same pairing appears in the exhibited draft, so it went through public exhibition and adoption unchanged. We report the 1,589 as the strategy states it and the chart as drawn. Either way the city is projected to miss.

Capacity is not the problem, on the strategy’s account. A council study found land already zoned residential could hold about 46,800 more dwellings under current controls (page 19), far more than the target. The adopted strategy is blunt about why that does not turn into homes: housing targets are ultimately achieved through dwelling completions rather than zoning capacity, and the gap comes from market demand, financing, environmental constraints, infrastructure availability, feasibility challenges and landowner intentions (page 19).

Feasibility is the sharpest of those. In the strategy’s summary, consultants tested seven locations and found apartment buildings currently feasible in four, high amenity, high value locations in Belmont, Boolaroo, Cardiff and Cockle Creek. In the other three, achievable prices did not cover rising construction and land costs, and the state’s mandatory affordable housing contributions further reduced feasibility for the areas tested (page 20). The strategy does not name the three.

We covered the approvals side of this gap in July, in our story on the housing target; that page now carries corrections and its own update on the adoption.

What it changes for someone building or buying

Not much yet, and the strategy says so in its verbs. On planning controls it points at candidates for review rather than committing to them. Rules requiring ground-floor commercial space in some centres make apartments harder to deliver, and Revisiting these controls may help balance the goal of vibrant, active centres with the need to support viable housing delivery; in some mixed-use zones A review of regulations may be needed (page 25). On housing types, it notes the changes to planning controls introduced in 2025 allowing for more dwelling types in more residential zones are already in place (page 26).

Three things already in force matter more to a household than the strategy does: the state station and town-centre rules above; the NSW Housing Pattern Book, which the strategy says provides plans at low cost and could reduce assessment times; and the state’s manufactured and moveable dwellings reforms, which it says were set to commence in mid-2026 (page 8). For buyers, the strategy’s price data says units have sold for 15 to 25 per cent less than houses every year for the past decade (page 27), in a city where 84 per cent of private dwellings were separate houses in 2021 (page 17).

The strategy is plain about the limits of the council’s role. Affordability depends on interest rates, taxes, construction costs and more; housing assistance and social housing have traditionally been state and federal work, and Local government is not equipped to take on that responsibility. (page 8). And: Planning uplift alone won’t deliver housing growth. (page 30). Its suggested answer is that the council can invest in amenity in its centres to make denser housing more viable there.

Affordable housing: one line that matters

The state’s station-precinct rules are the only mechanism in the strategy that requires affordable housing, and the strategy records that no applications have been received to date in Lake Macquarie, likely due to feasibility constraints (page 28). Beyond that, the strategy supports renewing about 3,100 ageing Homes NSW dwellings in the city, which it says are mostly three-bedroom houses that no longer suit smaller or older households (page 28). Only 4.2 per cent of the city’s housing is non-market housing, and 37 per cent of renting households are in housing stress (page 21).

Submissions from community housing groups, Shelter NSW and others asked for an affordable housing contribution scheme, inclusionary zoning and targets. The council’s response in the summary of submissions was that it had recently raised the development contributions discount for affordable housing to 100 per cent, and that Establishment of an affordable housing contribution scheme has been investigated, however this was not found to be feasible at this time. (agenda page 66). No change was made.

Two weeks after adoption, councillors carried a mayoral minute, 10 votes to 1, noting that staff were preparing an expression of interest for registered community housing providers to build and manage affordable housing on council-owned land. The minute says staff have identified land at Cardiff and Booragul that may be suitable, and argues a long-term lease at peppercorn rent would make such a project more feasible. The motion is in the 24 August agenda (item 26MM007) and the vote in the 28 September agenda’s minutes (page 11). It is the most concrete affordable-housing step in either document.

What changed between the draft and the adopted strategy

Fourteen formal submissions came in during the 28-day exhibition from 26 May to 22 June, and the draft was downloaded by 42 people, according to the staff report (agenda page 28). The report lists the changes. The ones with consequences:

• “Greenfield” is gone. The draft said the city could meet future housing needs within its existing urban footprint without releasing new greenfield land. The adopted text stops at the footprint (page 24). Two submissions, from the Urban Development Institute of Australia and a planner acting for the Seventh-day Adventist Church, argued for flexibility on rural land; the council’s response says planning proposals for rural-zoned land may still be considered where they demonstrate strategic merit (agenda page 63). The same night, the committee sent a proposal to rezone a rural transition lot at 51 Alton Road, Cooranbong, to low-density residential to the state for Gateway determination (item 26DP007), a rezoning its staff report describes as housing in an existing urban context.
• Hazard land. The staff report says Principle 1.2 was amended so that urban expansion into hazard-prone land is not supported. The adopted wording is not permitting urban expansion into areas at risk of hazards, without adequate planning (page 25).
• No timetable was added. Three submissions asked for actions, timeframes, responsibilities and measures. The council’s response: the Operational Plan identifies the actions, and Measurables are contained in the Council’s Community Strategic Plan and will not be duplicated in the Housing Strategy. (agenda page 68). The monitoring section was moved and reworded instead.

Six submissions disagreed about heights and density, for and against. No change was made; the council pointed to centre-by-centre plans done separately, naming the Wyee Structure Plan and the Morisset Place Strategy (agenda page 64).

Our read

This section is opinion, built on the facts above.

The strategy is honest about the problem and modest about the fix. It says plainly that the city has zoned room for nearly six times its 2029 target, that completions not zoning decide whether the target is met, and that apartments do not stack up financially in three of the seven places tested. That is more candour than most housing strategies manage.

But a reader who wants to know what will be built near them, and when, will not find it here. There is no number for any centre, no date for any review, and the few control changes it floats are framed as things that may be needed. Residents and peak bodies asked for a timetable and were told it lives in the Operational Plan. That is a legitimate way to run a council, but it means the test of this strategy is the next Operational Plan, not this document, and we will read it against the priorities here.

Two smaller points. Dropping “without releasing new greenfield land” is a real softening of the exhibited position, made in response to the development industry’s peak body and a church’s planner, while the community survey the strategy reports found residents generally prefer growth in existing urban areas. And a strategy whose central figure is a shortfall should not carry a chart that disagrees with it by 270 homes through exhibition and adoption. It is a small error with a simple fix, and the council should make it.

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