Local Government Infrastructure Charges

Recent amendments to the Integrated Planning Act 1997 allow the Minister for Planning to request that the Queensland Competition Authority review the Infrastructure Charges Schedules (ICSs) of certain councils.

A council’s ICS is part of its Priority Infrastructure Plan (PIP). The purpose of a PIP is to define the scale, type, timing and location of growth in an identified priority infrastructure area in order to plan and provide future trunk infrastructure and to determine the charges required to fund that trunk infrastructure in a timely fashion.

An ICS provides, amongst other things, a transparent account of the cost of trunk infrastructure and how those costs are to be apportioned reasonably to users. It is these costs and their apportionment that the Authority is required to review.