The council will write to NSW Planning Minister Rob Stokes to see if rules that ban the old pilot training facility from being used as temporary accommodation for longer than 182 days in a year can be changed.

Cr Helen Tickle said it would enable much better use of the accommodation facility given the pandemic has ruled out pilot training.

"At the moment we have 100 workers accommodated at this facility providing reasonably-priced accommodation," she said.

"We have a number of food processing industries in Tamworth and they all are unfortunately struggling to fully staff their operations.

"This has enabled those businesses to bring in staff from overseas and interstate to help them fulfil some of their employment vacancies."

The council will write to Minister for Planning Rob Stokes to ask him to delegate planning powers so it can make the changes.

But, Cr Glenn Inglis felt the proposal didn't go far enough.

"Just thinking strategically about it ... that change is fairly narrow and as you know we have a whole range of discussions on with UNE, TAFE and the Department of Education out there recently regarding a wide-range of educational offerings," he said.

"Is it not the right thing for us to do, seeing we are going to the trouble of doing that, to include education or students in a general sense at the same time Mr Mayor? These things have to go through a long-winded process."

If it receives a gateway determination, TRC will need to publicly exhibit the planning proposal.

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The council's general manager Paul Bennett said the strategy for Tamworth University is a hub-and-spoke model where education is closely linked to business.

"I would suggest if we were going to provide educational activities not linked to aviation it's likely they would be delivered elsewhere," he said.

Ultimately the council decided not to include students in its proposal, but suggested it could also be used for agricultural workers.

Pacific Islander staff moved into the facility in April to address a critical worker shortage in the region.

Cr Col Murray said the intention is still to make the arrangement short-term and convert it back to a pilot training hub.

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