Bushfire access matters. In NSW, Section 5.3.2 of Planning for Bush Fire Protection 2019 (PBP 2019) sets out the requirements for vehicle access. Like all bush fire protection measures, the intent is sound – ensure that residents can safely evacuate and that emergency services can quickly get in.
But here’s the problem: the acceptable solutions we are still using today were first drafted in Planning for Bushfire Protection 2006 (PBP 2006). They were essentially best-effort estimates at that time, drawn up without strong empirical data. They’ve served a purpose – giving councils, developers, and the community a common reference point – but they’ve become rigid rules rather than flexible guidelines, that evolve over time in response to new information.
The original PBP 2006 framework was performance-based at heart: it explicitly allowed for acceptable solutions or alternative solutions (or a combination of both), provided the performance criteria were met. PBP 2019 reaffirmed that same approach – encouraging flexibility, innovation, and the use of new science and design practices. Yet in practice, particularly in recent years, NSW Rural Fire Service (RFS) has tended to fall back on the acceptable solutions alone.
That’s where the problem lies. Acceptable solutions are not universal truths. They should not be treated as prescriptive road widths for every context, regardless of risk. In low-risk environments, sticking rigidly to “one-size-fits-all” widths undermines good urban design, stifles innovation, and ignores the improvements we now have in emergency management planning.
Take vehicle size as an example. Fire and Rescue NSW’s own vehicle access guideline (2019) makes it clear that general fire appliances are medium rigid (MR) vehicles (RFS Category 1 fire appliances are also MR) with similar operating envelopes to garbage trucks. If the local waste contractor can safely collect bins every week, there is no practical impediment to a pumper or tanker doing the same in an emergency.
And yet, PBP access tables – now 19 years old – still drive subdivision road design across the state. Worse, they are being wielded as a blunt instrument by the RFS, frequently clashing with contemporary DCP and LEP provisions that the RFS itself comments on. The outcome is a rigid, outdated view of “acceptable solutions” that ignores council requirements and blocks sensitive urban design. Instead of enabling streetscapes that balance amenity and access, the RFS continues to push an over-engineered, one-size-fits-all approach. In doing so, the RFS is overreaching the intent of PBP – treating acceptable solutions as the only path to compliance, when the framework was deliberately designed to support performance-based outcomes as well.
This overreach is especially problematic for new development on designated Bushfire Prone Land, where councils, developers and communities are already working within tighter constraints. By applying outdated access standards without context, the RFS is effectively compounding barriers to supply, cost efficiency, innovation and quality design outcomes.
The recent Land and Environment Court decision in Mark Ventures Pty Ltd v Penrith City Council [2025] NSWLEC 1293 provides a timely and powerful example of how the RFS rigid application of PBP’s acceptable solutions can be successfully challenged. In this case, both the Council and the applicant opposed the NSW RFS’s insistence on a perimeter road, arguing that it was unnecessary in the circumstances. The Court ultimately upheld the appeal and granted consent without a perimeter road, demonstrating that adherence to PBP’s performance criteria, not its Acceptable Solutions (being proposed by the RFS as prescriptive road templates) was appropriate in achieving genuine safety outcomes and balancing other considerations.caselaw.nsw.gov.au
This ruling offers clear legal backing for this blog’s central critique: the RFS’s one-size-fits-all interpretation of acceptable solutions runs counter to the flexibility and performance-based intent of the PBP framework.
Unnecessarily wide roads create a cascade of negative consequences that undermine both bushfire planning and broader urban design objectives. More pavement means more impervious surface area, which increases stormwater runoff, reduces infiltration, and drives up long-term maintenance costs for councils. At the same time, wider carriageways squeeze out verges and nature strips, limiting opportunities for street trees and landscaping that provide critical shade, cooling, and amenity. The result is hotter, harsher streetscapes that directly contradict government targets for urban heat reduction, tree canopy expansion, and climate resilience. Instead of delivering greener, more liveable communities, rigid adherence to oversized road standards entrenches vehicle-dominated environments and erodes the very qualities that good planning is meant to achieve.
What’s needed now is a reset. The RFS are reviewing PBP, although they can also provide updates at any time through the established practice of Fast Facts, Practice Notes and similar guidance. RFS access requirements should be anchored in real data on emergency vehicle performance – turning circles, swept paths, clearances – and integrated with best-practice urban design that delivers amenity as well as functionality. The framework for this already exists in PBP: the performance criteria are there to be applied flexibly, not overridden by the RFS with a penchant for reflex reliance on outdated acceptable solutions. For the system to work as intended, the RFS must adopt a risk-based approach to new development that is proportionate to the actual risk and supports balanced, context-sensitive outcomes and constant innovation, rather than rigid, unvalidated standards. More than ever, the RFS needs to use PBP as it was intended – especially in the current climate of housing supply pressures, rising costs of living, and the burden that over-engineered requirements place on productivity across new development.
