Business NSW has welcomed the City of Sydney’s move to overhaul planning controls and increase housing in the CBD and surrounding suburbs.

Proposed changes, which will go before the council’s planning committee on Monday, centre on addressing the clear shortage of rental housing in the nation’s financial heart.

The move follows Business NSW’s February 2023 report, Revaluing Sydney’s CBD, which advocated recycling commercial buildings in Sydney to address residential shortfalls through mixed-use development.

Business NSW Executive Director David Harding says this is an encouraging and timely step, “especially as we need to adapt to new professional working patterns”. 

“We are very pleased to see the City of Sydney responding to calls for transformation in increasing the supply of residential housing in Sydney,” Mr Harding said.

“We called for agile revaluation and reinvestment in the CBD property market to bring affordable housing, as well as 24/7 economic activity, to adapt to our new city reality.

“We need people back in our CBDs and the best way to do this is to provide more quality affordable housing close to where the jobs are.

“There is significant scope to remodel existing building stock and we look forward to working with the City of Sydney as it works to increase family apartments and boosting the feasibility of build-to-rent housing. This is very welcome news from the City of Sydney.”

Business Sydney Executive Director Paul Nicolaou said “the City of Sydney council should also ensure that some of the housing mix is allocated to essential workers such as police, nurses, paramedics, hospitality workers, cleaners and others so that they can live closer to where they work”. 

“Sydney needs essential workers otherwise our wonderful city cannot maintain its standing as a global and international city,” Mr Nicolaou said.

“Increasing the CBD population is vital to support the city’s economic recovery and to facilitate a pipeline of affordable housing so that essential workers can live closer to where they work.

“Having more people living in the CBD will help to make Sydney a liveable 24-hour city providing economic opportunities for its businesses and jobs for thousands of Sydneysiders.”