Kiama Business Network members aired their grievances to Council last Monday over the lack of options for local businesses to expand their operations within the area.

KBN hosted a roundtable discussion with Director of Strategies and Communities Ed Paterson regarding Kiama Council’s Employment Land Strategy.

Around 20 local business operators took the opportunity to grill Paterson on the draft strategy which was recently placed on public exhibition.

Paterson said on the back of the roundtable discussion, Council had decided to extend the period for community engagement and the Strategy would now be on public exhibition for a further fortnight until 19 October.

At the information session, Paterson discussed how the draft strategy sat within the Housing Strategy which was approved by Council in July as well as the assumptions and potential shortcomings within the document, as well as barriers to economic growth in the LGA and how they can be overcome.

“Most of the conversation was around supply, but I want to tease out those other barriers to sort of economic development and employment growth at the moment,” Paterson said.

“I’m really keen to understand are there other things going on in our towns and villages that either we have within our responsibility and power to make changes to or if it’s things that have to do with superannuation and public liability and workers’ comp claims, they’re not something that we have the power to change but we can advocate in partnership with KBN and Business Illawarra to the other tiers of government to change.”

Council will consider community feedback before it hopes to finalise the Strategy by the end of the year.

Gerringong businessman Derek McMahon, who has been lobbying Council to include his Sims Road property as part of the available employment lands, said there were dozens of local businesses that were dismayed by the lack of options in the LGA.

“It was a good opportunity for the planning department to learn how the business community felt about it,” he said.

“We certainly felt that we were listened to but it’s just a start.”

McMahon said the key takeaway from the meeting was that the Council planning department agreed that the baseline numbers for current available space were wrong and that would be reconsidered.

Paterson said Council had already started reviewing the accuracy of the assessment of the current supply.

“We’ll start re-crunching numbers. I don’t think you can get much better feedback than what we heard in the room from a supply point of view.

McMahon added that there were several of hectares of land, particularly around Gerringong, that had been allocated as future employment land in the draft strategy which was useless for local business because it was a riparian zone or part of the rail corridor.

KBN is keen to set up another meeting with Council, ideally with the elected Councillors, to emphasise to them about the critical shortage of employment land in the LGA.

As part of the Employment Land Strategy, Council is aiming to vastly improve the area available for businesses to operate to more than double the industrial space, an extra 12,000 square metres of retail outlets and 8885 square metres of commercial space.

This is to be achieved through the enhancement of existing areas as well as extra supply in Bombo Quarry, south and west Kiama, and Gerringong.

Bombo Quarry has again been raised as a potential long-term option for employment land but it would require years of restoration work before it could be suitable.