On 3 November 2025, the Select Committee on Rural Housing and Second Dwellings Reform in the New South Wales Legislative Council began public hearings to examine how rural-zoned land in NSW might accommodate more housing — specifically, second dwellings.
This inquiry touches on multiple pressures: housing affordability, regional population retention, multigenerational living, workforce housing for agriculture, and how to balance these with preserving rural character, productive land, and infrastructure.
What is the inquiry about?
The Committee has detailed Terms of Reference that guide what it must investigate. Some of the key areas include:
- Reforming planning instruments and development controls to make it easier to build second dwellings in rural zones
- Considering amendments to the State Environmental Planning Policy (Housing) 2021, the State Environmental Planning Policy (Exempt and Complying Development Codes) 2008, and related instruments, to create more streamlined approval pathways for second dwellings on rural-zoned land.
- Examining how these reforms would interact with local environmental plans (LEP’s), Section 3.28 of the Environmental Planning and Assessment Act 1979, elevation/flood hazard criteria, and other land-based constraints.
- Looking at whether size, attachment and internal lot distance restrictions should be removed (or modified) to enable second dwellings to be larger or more detached from the principal dwelling.
- Considering the impact on rural productivity: how second dwellings might affect rural activities, land fragmentation/subdivision, infrastructure adequacy, multigenerational living, affordability and rural population growth.
Why the Reforms matter
Housing supply & affordability
Regional NSW is facing tight rental and housing markets. Allowing second dwellings on rural land could:
- Provide more housing options
- Support multigenerational living
- Stabilise regional populations, which supports schools, services, and economies.
Infrastructure, servicing, and hazard risk
Second dwellings require infrastructure: wastewater treatment, roads, access, water supply, electricity, safe bushfire evacuation, flood risk mitigation. Also, rural zones may have hazard overlays. The Committee’s Terms of Reference explicitly ask the question of servicing adequacy. Ensuring that additional dwellings do not impose unsustainable burdens on infrastructure or emergency services is key.
Why it’s worth paying attention
For landowners in rural NSW, this inquiry could significantly change what they can do on their rural-zoned properties. It may offer new opportunities for multigenerational living, rental income, succession planning, retaining younger families on the land, or enabling rural workers to live closer.
For councils and communities, the reform offers a chance to increase housing supply in regional areas and support rural economies — but also demands careful balancing so as to protect agricultural land, infrastructure, environment, and amenity.
For housing supply and regional policy, this is a creative lever: using rural-zoned land to help ease pressures in regional housing markets, without resorting entirely to new greenfield subdivisions or urban fringe expansion.
The Committee’s report is due by 13th February 2026.
