SWAN communities’ members who attended the first planning process review committee meeting expressed concerns the scope in the terms of reference set during their first meeting lost the focus of the review.

The City of Swan planning process review committee held their first meeting on June 4 to agree on a scope of works to inform a review by an independent planning consultant.

City of Swan chief executive officer Stephen Cain said the committee agreed to the scope of works.

“The city has commenced implementation of the scope of works by requesting quotations from three independent planning consultants in accordance with the city’s procurement requirements,” he said.

Committee community representative Dixon Lowe attended the meeting and said afterward that an important aspect to maintain in the review was that it needed to be about processes and not decisions.

“The requested independent review is about the process and application of regulations, not about individual decisions made,” he said.

“We allege that there are several examples where City of Swan planning officers have not followed the requirements of the WA Planning Framework and that the assessments of many planning applications fail to meet statutory requirements.

“By insisting, in this review, that the WA Planning Framework is the standard to test past planning assessments, we are urging City of Swan council to avoid any defensive analysis of internal procedures or benchmarking against other local government authorities.

“It’s simple. Let the independent reviewer answer, ‘Do the planning examples the community has provided meet the planning framework requirements?’”

Fellow committee community representative Gavan Troy also attended the meeting and suggested under the present circumstances a complete restart of the committee considerations needed to occur.

“Such an action is not fully agreed by the deputy committee member and councillor Rod Henderson but it is my deeply considered view emerging from me being the initiator of the review motion at the City of Swan annual electors meeting in February 2026 and beforehand having worked on The Vines issue in various ways since its creation in the late 1980s,” he said.

“I am deeply concerned with the outcome of the recently held planning process review committee meeting.

“Broad-based planning principles should not be ignored when you have a national housing crisis.”

Mr Troy said the current proposed terms of reference was restrictive and severely limited the scope of the review as other planning aspects other than The Vines case deserved attention too.

“I suggest West Swan drainage, Midway Ford and the (Hazelmere) data centre (cases),” he said.

Mr Lowe said these were drawn from the community’s list of examples for planning that need to be reviewed by the independent consultant.

“The CEO has made it too broad by suggesting the consultant sample wherever they like instead of a focused list informed by community,” he said.

“The new terms of reference has lost its original focus of looking at whether city planning met the state planning framework requirements.”

Late on Wednesday night, as a matter of urgent business, council voted 11-1 to request Mr Cain pause all activities for the appointment of the planning review consultant until the terms of reference have been renegotiated.

Mr Cain said the committee is set to meet again today to consider an addendum to the scope of works.