Shellharbour tiny-home pilot opens for public review, not yet approved

Shellharbour’s tiny-home pilot went on public exhibition on 9 April, and the next month will help decide whether mobile tiny homes can become a real rental option in town or stay trapped in policy limbo. Written submissions are open until 4.30pm on 22 May 2026, giving residents a narrow window to shape a proposal that is not approved yet and cannot be rolled out in practice.

The plan under review is a two-year pilot that would remove the need for a development application for mobile tiny homes used as rental accommodation. Council papers say the homes would be allowed only as exempt development on lots with an existing dwelling house, in certain residential zones, and only one mobile tiny home would be permitted per property. That single-home limit is one of the most important pressure points in the proposal, because it will help determine whether the policy functions as a modest infill rental tool or remains too constrained to matter at scale.

The draft rules also draw a hard line around what counts as a mobile tiny home. The dwellings would need to be capable of being registered under the Road Transport Act 2013, and they could be no larger than 12.5 metres long, 2.5 metres wide and 4.5 metres high. They would also need connections to reticulated services, including potable water, and they would be excluded from flood-prone and bushfire-prone land. Those details are where public feedback could have the most practical impact, because they set the boundary between a genuine path to buildability and a pilot that only works on a few ideal blocks.

The proposal has already cleared an important state planning hurdle. The NSW Government issued a gateway determination saying the plan should proceed, with the proposed local environmental plan to be finalised on or before 29 January 2027. Still, the council has been clear that the public exhibition stage is not approval. The planning proposal and Local Approvals Policy are listed as Council ref. PP0002/2025 and Planning Portal ref. PP-2025-2427.

Shellharbour first resolved in March 2024 to test mobile tiny homes as rental accommodation alongside an existing dwelling, and the city’s planning papers show why the issue has moved so slowly. Tiny homes sit in a grey area between land uses and building classes, a point the Planning Institute of Australia has flagged as a real challenge for councils trying to respond to housing pressure without weakening safety standards. The ABC described the Shellharbour plan in September 2025 as a New South Wales first, and that sense of first-mover risk is still hanging over the pilot as the public exhibition clock runs down.