In addition to research meetings and phone discussions by the project team, many participating Councils have met with local business representatives. Comments of support have included:
Manning Valley Chamber of Commerce, Industry and Tourism Assoc:
"The Manning Valley has long struggled with managed growth and anything that will deliver improved availability, consistency and flow of information between relevant parties to the planning process - Councils, applicants and external agencies - will significantly boost the region's capacity to deliver the best possible growth solutions"
Mid North Coast Development Board:
"Small and home-based business would benefit from reforms that streamline the regulatory and compliance processes. This would assist in the growth and development of this vitally important sector that provides significant private enterprise employment in this region".
St George & Sutherland Shire Business Enterprise Centre:
"This project is of vital importance to small and home-based business to reduce time and cost when dealing with local government. It will allow businesses to deal with Council (through the web) at a time suitable to them rather than during Council's office hours".
Rockdale Chamber of Commerce:
"Small businesses face challenges each and every day and any program or incentive that enable small business to interact with and deal with local government more easily will be readily acceptable to us and must be fully supported".
Holbrook and District Chamber of Commerce:
"Small businesses can find planning activities time consuming and difficult to understand and manage. This affects the business in many ways including loss of time, impacting on normal business operations during business hours, costs related, and overall understanding and liaison with local council planning regulations being currently intricate and lengthy".
Shoalhaven Area Consultative Committee:
"We believe business access to up-to-date information regarding the current development policies will be of benefit to all small to medium businesses in the Shoalhaven, particularly those in the home-based and development industry areas. To be able to view and monitor applications will be a bonus to clients, consultants and adjacent landowners alike".
Shoalhaven Industry and Business Association:
"The availability of information in plain English and in electronic form is of enormous benefit to our members as is the ability to lodge and view applications via the Internet. Small and medium sized business make up the bulk of our members and as they are often short of time and resources they will appreciate any improvements in information systems which save them time and ultimately money".
Ryde Business Forum:
"There are frustrations however given that many small business people usually wear many different hats within the business, with varying degrees of acumen and often the paperwork, administration and regulatory compliance is done after the business day is over and family commitments have been met. Access to 'user friendly' and presumably, easily interpreted information should go a long way to easing pressures for business people who might otherwise be queuing for information. Anything the Forum can do to add our support to your project, we would be most delighted to do so".
St George Asian Business Association:
"I wish to advise of our organisation's strong support for this initiative".
Tumut Region - Developing Naturally Inc (Development Corporation)
TRDN welcomes a project designed to improve the efficiencies of the planning process and facilitate additional development in the region. TRDN is of the view that meeting these objectives will encourage additional investment in the region resulting in direct and indirect benefits to small business (including home-based businesses) and the wider community.
Riverina Business Enterprise Centre:
"Access to 24 hour planning related information and tools will increase the flexibility of the process and in turn reduce the financial and time costs incurred by intending and existing business owners. We believe that both of these projects will lead to more efficient and timely council assessment processes, which in turn will enhance the consistency of the application process for small business owners".
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