Productive Places

Landcom is on track to meet our commitment to enable 30,000 enduring jobs by 2036. FY23 in scope projects include SMNW Places program, Macarthur Gardens North and Fennell Bay as well as our Panorama project at North Wilton, which was announced in FY21 and is forecast to make a substantial contribution to Landcom meeting this goal.

These forecasts will continue to be subject to change as future projects remain in the planning phase and we respond to market demand.

In total, Landcom staff engaged over 346 primary students throughout the reporting period, as part of our contributions to school educational programs.

Landcom commenced a new partnership with Keep Australia Beautiful in FY23 to deliver waste education programs in schools in our communities. Keep Australia Beautiful is an advocate and education charity working towards raising awareness amongst communities on keeping environments clean and beautiful. The program called EnviroMentors, aims to positively impact and educate students about waste and recycling and has two school-based interventions throughout the year, as well as a bespoke community activation at the end of the year.

Blairmount Public School in Claymore, participated in the incursion with 51 students participating in the education workshops. 26 of those students also participated in a waste audit which showed that food scraps and soft plastics were the most common materials found in the bins. Keep Australia Beautiful provided a landfill diversion guide to students and teachers with suggestions on how to divert waste from landfill.

In FY23 Landcom commenced a new partnership with Keep Australia Beautiful to deliver waste education programs in primary schools.

In FY23 Landcom continued our partnership with National Theatre for Children, focused on building mental resilience in primary school aged children.

The ‘Mind Masters’ live performance and follow up in class activations were delivered in one primary school in FY23 which is located in the suburb of Claymore where Landcom is rebuilding a residential community. The program uses a combination of live theatre performance and student engagement to promote concepts and practices to enable good mental health.

Designed with a clinical psychologist the Mind Masters program complements the NSW curriculum. This year it built on sessions that were delivered digitally in FY21 and FY22, so that students were exposed to multiple teaching points over time, such as mindfulness, stress, resilience, and the link between mental and physical health.

The FY23 program reached a total of 295 students and the impact measurement we will undertake in FY24 through pre and post testing, will aim to achieve positive outcomes for the students across several key areas such as stress, resilience, physical health, mindfulness, and overall impact.

In FY23, Landcom started a partnership with the University of Wollongong to quantify the carbon and cost benefits of deconstructing and diverting waste resources from an old hospital site in Bulli. The research aims to demonstrate that viable alternatives to demolition and waste sorting exist – for example materials reuse onsite and diversion to secondary markets. For more information, see Case Study: Exploring the benefits and costs of deconstruction.

Landcom also commissioned industry research by AECOM to investigate what underpins quality and affordable compact communities. This research focuses on alternatives to detached homes on large lots, while maintaining the amenity these typically offer (e.g., backyards and gardens). Landcom intends that our research investment helps shift our product delivery without compromising on customer demands to address the housing and affordability crisis across NSW.

More compact communities can also result in reduced upfront carbon, a reduction in material waste through good design and facilitate a larger proportion of natural areas and open space, supporting improved biodiversity outcomes. We anticipate sharing outcomes from this research in FY24.

Finally, Landcom have codesigned a brief evaluating the upfront carbon in class 1a buildings¹, with the Green Building Council of Australia. The research will look at the complex supply chains of class 1a homes and identify opportunities to reduce upfront carbon with engagement from the homes building industry. This research is expected to commence in early FY24.

_________________________

^{1 A Class 1a building is defined by the NCC (National Construction Code) as a single dwelling being a detached house; or one of a group of attached dwellings being a town house, row house or the like.}

In FY23 Landcom had four projects in scope for our targets related to the provision of electric vehicle (EV) rapid charge stations or shared charging points. This target includes the SMNW Places precincts Hills Showground, Cherrybrook and Norwest, as well as Macarthur Gardens North which have all established contract conditions of sale to deliver against these targets. New projects including Bulli and Hillsborough will include this target, but as they are still in design, they are not in scope for this year.

In FY23, Landcom purchased two EVs – a Hyundai Kona and a Mitsubishi Outlander. These two vehicles are expected to reduce our fuel consumption as an organisation and continue to drive down our emissions. We also anticipate using these EVs to educate our staff about the benefits of EVs with the hope of encouraging and driving a higher uptake within our communities.

There were no projects in scope for this target during the reporting period. Hillsborough and Bulli fall outside the scope of this target, as they do not have sufficiently large community open spaces to warrant or draw demand for public Wi-Fi. The SMNW Precinct Cherrybrook, Fennell Bay, Wentworth Point and North Tuncurry are still within planning and are therefore out of scope. These sites will explore opportunities to respond to this target as planning progresses.