Local commercial strategy

The Local Commercial Strategy provides the basis for decision making with respect to the development of new structure plans, amendments to existing structure plans and future rezoning and development applications for commercial centres.

The Local Commercial Strategy consists of three parts:

Part A – includes background research, economic analysis and retail needs assessment.

Part B – outlines the recommended strategies for retail floorspace.

Part C – outlines the recommended strategies for bulky goods retail and commercial offices.

Indicative retail threshold floorspace

The indicative retail threshold floorspace allocations for all centres in the Local Commercial Strategy are not floorspace “caps” but instead provide guidance to the City on what the appropriate amount of retail floorspace should be for each centre without impacting on the economic health or sustainability of other centres.

If a centre seeks to extend its retail floorspace above the threshold in the Local Commercial Strategy, it would need to demonstrate, via a Retail Sustainability Assessment, that the additional retail floorspace would not detrimentally impact on the economic health of other centres and would not undermine the hierarchy of centres in both the Local Commercial Strategy and State Planning Policy 4.2 – Activity Centres for Perth and Peel.

The Local Commercial Strategy was endorsed by Council at its December 2013 meeting and the recommendations of the strategy have been included in the City’s Local Planning Strategy.