FAQs

Our town centres play a vital everyday role as places where our community lives, shops, works, relaxes and connects.

We want to build on what makes our town centres special today, while improving them for the future.

That’s why we’re preparing Place Plans, to capture what our community values in each centre and what could make them more liveable. 

Across 2026 and 2027, together with the community, we’ll be creating Place Plans for Miranda, Sutherland-Kirrawee, Engadine, Cronulla, Caringbah, Menai–Illawong and Jannali.

We’ll be looking at a range of improvements, including providing greater housing choice, supporting a vibrant business environment, refreshing the streetscape and better transport options.

These plans will work best when they reflect your needs and ideas so we’ll be inviting your input to help our plans take shape.  

Place Plans will build on the Council’s Local Housing Strategy and the Affordable Housing Contribution Scheme adopted in July 2025.

Click here to find more about the Place Plan program.

The Caringbah town centre provides a range of retail, health and leisure services, and housing opportunities, for the Sutherland Shire community. 

We want to strengthen the centre’s vibrancy and make it a better place to visit and call home.

We are in the early stages of preparing a draft Place Plan for Caringbah which will provide a clear and co-ordinated framework to guide additional housing choice, more jobs and new infrastructure.

We want to hear from you about what’s working well in Caringbah, and what improvements and changes are needed as we develop the draft Place Plan.

Place Plans will identify infrastructure needs to support the growth of centres.

This may include:

• New and embellished open space
• Road and intersection improvements for pedestrian access and safety
• Public domain upgrades
• Improved pedestrian and cycle paths
• New or improved community facilities
• Public art
• Better lighting
• Street tree planting

Some of this infrastructure will be partly or fully funded by new development. Other infrastructure may be funded by government grants or Council’s general revenue.

In some instances, the Place Plans will advocate for the delivery of improved regional or State infrastructure by other levels of government.

We are interested in your views as to what infrastructure should be prioritised in a future Place Plan for Caringbah.

Place Plans will facilitate smart and sustainable planning by identifying strategic locations for additional housing – and therefore more people – in areas well-serviced by public transport and offering local services and amenities.

By doing this, residents will be more likely to walk or cycle to their destinations which helps create a healthy community and reduces congestion on local roads.

Prioritising pedestrians, active transport, and places for people in centres, is the focus of the Place Plans, rather than prioritising cars. This allows for greater street activation, which benefits local businesses and, in turn, the resilience and wellbeing of the local community.

At the same time, it is acknowledged that some new residents will want to drive.

To cater for this, and to reduce on-street parking impacts on surrounding streets, all new developments will be required to provide parking in accordance with Council’s requirements. 

In addition, the Place Plans will identify broader road infrastructure and corridor upgrades, most of which will need to be supported and implemented by the NSW Government.

Place Plans will consider planning control changes to make it easier to build new homes, which meet the needs of Sutherland Shire community members.

Research has found that additional housing supply makes it easier for people to find places to live. 

 This includes helping young people to leave home and stay close to their parents, and over 50s to find downsizing-friendly accommodation near their children.

Most new homes delivered through the Place Plan program will be apartments, which recent research has found are typically more affordable than houses.

It makes sense to build this new housing in Place Plan town centres which are well-serviced by public transport and close to shops and services.

Place Plans will also:

• Help Sutherland Shire Council meets its NSW Government target to have 6,000 completed dwellings in the five years to 2029.
• Require developers to support new affordable housing (earmarked for residents on low to moderate incomes) if their site is receiving a significant increase in density (that is floor space).

The intention of Place Planning is to support locally appropriate and financially feasible development which helps fund and contribute to street-level vibrancy and activity as well as infrastructure upgrades.

This is expected to involve the introduction of new opportunities for apartment buildings within, and near, the centre.

In addition, focussing change in and around centres will help maintain the landscape character of low density residential neighbourhoods further away from centres and minimise impacts on areas of scenic quality and environmental sensitivity.

Place Plans will be supported by more detailed planning guidelines against which development applications will be assessed.

New development will be required to reflect and complement the scale, materials, and design language of the centre in which they are located.

This feedback will help us prepare the Place Plan for public exhibition.

In February 2025, the NSW Government introduced the Low and Mid Rise Housing Policy into the Caringbah centre. 

This policy applies within 800m of the railway station and town centre. It permits dual occupancies, semi-detached dwellings, terrace-style development and small unit blocks (known as manor houses) in low density areas. It also supports apartment buildings in medium density zones. 

Find out more about this policy here. 

The future Caringbah Place Plan will consider this policy, including by examining: 

• The future local infrastructure needs to support the area’s anticipated increased population from future developments flowing from the Low and Mid Rise reform 
• The need for additional mixed use buildings in Caringbah’s commercially zoned land, which will help drive increased centre vibrancy. The Low and Mid Rise Housing Policy does not apply in commercially-zoned land. 
• Requiring developers to set aside or funding new permanent new affordable housing for low to moderate income earners. This compares favourably to the Low and Mid Rise Housing Policy, which does not support new permanent affordable housing.   

We will soon be seeking community feedback on a concept design for the proposed new Caringbah Town Centre Park, at the corner of Willarong Road and the Kingsway. This park will create additional open space to help cater for Caringbah’s expected growth.

In mid-2025, we sought early community feedback to inform the preparation of the concept design for this park.

An application for demolition of the former Caringbah Marketplace building, and construction of an ALDI supermarket, liquor store and cafe, was refused by the Sutherland Local Planning Panel in September 2024.

The panel refused the application as it proposed to use Council-owned land for vehicular and pedestrian access, and stormwater drainage, without any agreement in place with Council for this purpose.

Council would be happy to receive a new application to activate this site, given the existing building there is in a state of disrepair and the site’s potentially important role in the Caringbah town centre. The access issues would need to be resolved as part of a new application.

The future Caringbah Place Plan will also be considering planning controls for this and all other town centre sites.