While the New South Wales Government introduced heritage protection with the Heritage Act 1977, now in 2025 the draft of the first ever NSW Heritage Strategy has been released. The Draft Strategy is currently on public exhibition until 13 July.

The Society has submitted feedback on the draft document. You can view the draft submission WBGS submission_Draft NSW Heritage Strategy FINAL 250626

In brief, the Society has called for the Draft Strategy to be further developed and refined with clear tools to achieve the aim of protecting NSW heritage. The Draft Strategy as exhibited now identifies that “The NSW Government has committed to a 5-year target of delivering 377,000 new dwellings across the state by 2029 as part of its commitment to the National Housing Accord.” The way on how to balance heritage protection with the need for extensive urban renewal to provide more housing has not been clearly expressed in the document.

The Draft Strategy assures that state and local heritage items will continue to be protected. However as the Society points out in its submission, to create appropriate protection the neighbouring properties of the heritage items need to be zoned to prevent medium and high rise development, so that there is an appropriate and sympathetic buffer around the heritage items.

For example the single storey Griffin-designed Cameron House at 33 Marian Street, Killara designed by Walter Burley Griffin1 would be unacceptably impacted if a development of three stories or more was allowed to be built on any of its boundaries.

Also it is of great concern that Heritage Conservation Areas (HCA) are not mentioned in the Draft NSW Heritage Strategy. HCAs have been created in previous decades with significant council resources, extensive independent and professional expertise and thorough community engagement. They are a very important tool to conserving NSW heritage.

A heritage strategy for NSW needs to inform the urban renewal policy to ensure that new housing will be located in “the right places”. The right places should under no circumstances disregard the existing conservation areas, as may be interpreted by omitting HCAs from the Draft Strategy.

In addition, resources in the last decade have slowed to such an extent that now just a handful of buildings are assessed for heritage listing per year. This puts at risk the hundreds of heritage properties not yet listed due to the huge backlog in the assessment processing at the NSW Heritage Office.

The Government must deliver a more strategic approach and protection for our heritage with practical, feasible and well-funded actions.
The NSW government needs to invest in this. It needs to budget for a best practice approach that does justice to heritage, the state and its people. Given that $14 billion is spent by cultural and heritage visitors in NSW (as stated on page 3 of Draft Strategy) this should not be difficult to achieve.

It is of great concern that the draft strategy lacks tools for implementation of its vision and is a long way short of best practice. It is incomplete. It compromises all heritage items by not requiring a buffer zone around them, and it threatens all conservation areas by opening them up to unsympathetic development.
The Society objects to the Draft NSW Heritage Strategy in its current form, as its simplistic approach poses a threat to NSW’s heritage.
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The NSW Government is seeking feedback on this draft heritage strategy.

The public exhibition period is open until 13 July via the Have your say website at
https://www.haveyoursay.nsw.gov.au/nsw-heritage-strategy

Everyone is invited to provide feedback via the website, by filling out the survey, contributing an idea or making a written submission.
Following public exhibition, the strategy will be revised to incorporate feedback provided.