A new method of handling development on the escarpment is "good news" for the environment, according to Wollongong Greens councillor George Takacs.
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The Farmborough Heights to Mount Kembla Concept Plan, which takes in 54 landholdings, includes a recommendation that more than half of the escarpment land be given an E2 environmental zoning.
Cr Takacs said the zoning was the highest the council could apply and was one below the zoning that applied to national parks.
"This is good news for the conservation of the escarpment and the ecosystems that it contains," Cr Takacs said.
The E2 zoning prohibits the building of dwellings or anything that does not "improve the biodiversity outcome".
Cr Takacs said the concept plan would let landowners know where they stood, as well as guide the council in protecting the escarpment.
"That's how decisions will be made on these plan proposals - do they achieve at least as good a conservation outcome as if we just went ahead with the E2 zoning as outlined in the concept plan?" he said.
"With all those environmental zones, E2, E3, E4, one of the objectives is to improve the ecological qualities of that site. Whatever they want to do they have to meet that 'maintain or improve' test as well."
E3 and E4 zones do allow for some development but with limitations to safeguard the surrounding environment.
The concept plan set the bar high for landholders looking to develop their land, Cr Takacs said.
They could still alter the E2 zones, but they had to make it better than what was already there.
"If you want to go outside the concept plan you've really got to do something that demonstrates a conservation outcome better than just going ahead with the E2 zoning on your land," he said.
"There will be a lot of landholders who will probably find, if they try and put in a planning proposal, they might find their land is identified that it all should be E2 and they haven't come up with anything that leads to a better conservation outcome, it'll just get rejected."
A spokesman from the Farmborough Heights Action Group, which has worked to limit development on the escarpment, believes all zoning should be left as is and not changed.
The spokesman said this would stop developers from being able to rezone land to allow for any sort of construction.
"We believe the current zoning up here is fine," the spokesman said.
He also questioned the concept plan's aim that any development must enhance the escarpment.
"What we all said was, "How can houses and removing vegetation be enhancing the escarpment?'," the spokesman said.