A very recent VCAT decision highlights once again how residents are personae non gratis when it comes to this council’s planning department and the sycophantic councillors who allow Newton and Akehurst to literally do as they please. Here’s a little bit of history.
On the 30th August 2011 councillors voted unanimously to pass the following motion – “Seeks authorisation from the Minister for Planning to prepare and exhibit Amendment C90 which proposes to alter the Housing Diversity Area Policy and Urban Village Policy to include prescriptive guidance for development at the interface of Housing Diversity and Minimal Change areas”.
Nearly a year later we find out in the fine print of the Quarterly Reports that HERE IS A COUNCIL RESOLUTION THAT HAS NEVER BEEN CARRIED OUT. Nor has there been any motion to withdraw, rescind, put on hold, etc. The amendment has never been advertised, never had submissions called and been allowed to disappear into the ether. No public announcement has been made as to the reasons why officers have failed to carry out a council resolution. All that we know is that there suddenly appeared the minimalist sentence ‘Amendment will be withdrawn. The issue of transition will be addressed through the New Zones’. Who made this decision? When was it made? And how can a council resolution suddenly be overturned in secret?
That’s only half of the story because whilst countless other councils are passing amendment after amendment in the attempt to shore up as many safety precautions as possible for when the planning zone reforms come in, Glen Eira is sitting on its hands and doing bugger all. The ramifications of this inaction was evident in a recent vcat appeal and decision.
The VCAT hearing involved an application for a 3 storey building, multiple dwellings and reduced car parking. The site was Glen Huntly Rd (housing diversity/tram lines) and abutted Minimal Change. Hence the proposed amendment would have been extremely important here in protecting residential amenity. Here are the lamentable arguments put up by council and relevant extracts from the final decision. (See http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/cases/vic/VCAT/2013/381.html for the full decision)
Council advised that these setback distances were recommended in its proposed amendment C90 to manage the interface between housing diversity and minimal change areas, and as a response to Clause 22.07 to reduce the visibility of additional levels when the proposal is higher than the prevailing height of an area.
Council noted that it did not impose the minimum setback of 4 metres on the ground level as recommended in the amendment, acknowledging that there are currently out buildings in the rear yards of 6 Emma Street and 4 Lonsdale Street. Conceding that Amendment C90 has yet been exhibited, Council still wished to pursue the desired setback as a reflection of its thinking of interface management.
Council has imposed permit conditions to require the first and second floor to be further recessed to manage the change from a housing diversity area to a minimal change area, as recommended by its Amendment C90, which will result in the loss of dwellings.
As Mr. Bissett pointed out (for developer), Amendment C90 is not a seriously entertained planning proposal. It has not been on exhibition and it is premature to implement the setbacks recommended in this amendment. The approach should be one of the particular set of circumstances and the context of the site: that is whether the proposed setbacks of the various floors an acceptable interface with.6 Emma Street and 4 Lonsdale Street.
Given all this, questions have to be asked:
- Why has a council resolution not been carried out?
- Who made the decision to withdraw or abandon? When was it made? and most importantly – WHY was it made?
- What is the real agenda behind all this?
- Why are councillors allowing employees to rule the roost?
- Why aren’t residents afforded the full protection as originally intended?
- Why after two years has nothing happened? What aren’t residents being told?
- Why didn’t this development come to a full council meeting in the first place? What is the precise criteria that determines whether an application remains in the hands of the hired help?
- When will councillors start exercising their mandated duties and INSIST that proper transparency and governance occurs in this council?
- When will councillors finally get off their backsides and insist that ALL of the outcomes of the 2010 Planning Scheme Review are carried out. 3 years of deferment, inaction, and silence is not good enough.
- When will they stop being accomplices to the continued failure of good governance in Glen Eira?
Glen Eira Debates 
April 16, 2013 at 6:52 PM
What we need here is a ‘Lobo Rant reply’. He would be the only one game enough to stick their head up on this ‘disclosure’.
If you’re out there Oscar?
April 16, 2013 at 9:25 PM
This Vcat appeal was heard on the 6 March, well and truly months and months and months after the council officer would have known that there was not going to be any amendment. Council can’t have its cake and eat it too. Either there is policy or there isn’t a policy. The decision was 100 percent correct in that it’s insane to argue for something that doesn’t exist or hasn’t happened. The best bit is that council wouldn’t even have stuck to this policy about the 4 metre setbacks. Objectors haven’t got a hope with this sort of council and this sort of planning.
April 17, 2013 at 12:12 AM
Ah Amendment C90 – gotta be one of Councils finest spin moments – who else could call a building setbacks (only applicable to the side of the development facing a minimal change area) Transition Zones. This Amendment was passed by Council on 30 August, 2011 and was later withdrawn – supposedly because of the proposed planning reform zones (absolute bumkin by the way).
No wonder the developer successfully argued a policy, intended to be introduced then later withdrawn for spurious reasons, should not be taken seriously (even if it had a high falluting name).
Yep definitely time this Council stepped up to the plate and started to do it’s job and followed what residents said they wanted and Council agreed to do in the 2010 planning scheme review.
April 17, 2013 at 12:07 PM
What we are seeing here is all according to plan. Sit idle and don’t produce what you promised to produce thus it all favours developers in the end. It’s pretty hard to argue against 6 storey buildings along tram lines or in housing diversity when you’ve allowed ten and eight storeys to be erected. All part of the plan so that high rise and high density becomes impossible to stop. On top of this there’s a lousy governance structure where people are kept totally in the dark until it’s far too late to do anything about it and that includes councillors as well. The whole place needs a good dose of epsom salts and a change in personnel.
April 18, 2013 at 12:08 PM
Amendment C90 should be unnecessary but has been brought about by the wholesale failure of the Planning System, both by Council and VCAT. One of the fictions repeated ad nauseum by decision-makers is that loss of amenity is acceptable in Housing Diversity areas. They even go so far as to claim that this is supported by SPPF, without ever identifying which section in which government policy supports this view.
GEPS contains “Standards” [ResCode] covering developments up to and including 3 storeys; and those standards also appear in Guidelines for Higher Density Residential Development [4+ storeys]. Their purpose is to provide “reasonable standards of amenity for existing and new residents”. By rejecting them, decision-makers are explicitly saying that unreasonable standards of amenity are acceptable for a significant subset of the population. The standards are somewhat half-heartedly maintained in Minimal Change areas, but not in Housing Diversity areas, hence the conflict when a development in HA abuts MC.
C90 is meaningless, in the same sense that everything in a Planning Scheme is meaningless. Nothing is binding on a decision-maker, so arguments about whether “Amendment C90 is not a seriously entertained planning proposal” are a waste of time. While it might have reminded Council staff and VCAT what Council wishes us to think is what it considers acceptable, its not binding and would not and will not change the behaviours of the decision-makers responsible for it having been created in the first place. BTW C90 did receive conditional approval from the Minister, but has never been exhibited.
April 18, 2013 at 12:43 PM
We certainly do not disagree with your comments Reprobate. Our focus however is on the gulf between words and actions, resolutions passed by councillors and the complete and utter failure of this administration to carry out council resolutions within a ‘reasonable’ timespan.
Another example of this concerns the issue of IMPERVIOUS SURFACES. In February 2012, after much twoing and froing, and when officers’ recommendations were that ONLY minimal change areas be protected, councillors (to their credit) carried this resolution which states in part –
“Prepare a Planning Scheme Amendment to lower the percentage of
impervious surfaces within the Minimal Change Area and Housing
Diversity Areas.” (see our comments at: https://gleneira.wordpress.com/2012/03/09/impervious-surfaces-elections/).
Over a year later nothing has happened. Another council resolution that has not been acted upon. No explanation from anyone; no questions asked as to why, or what’s the progress. Total silence! It is unforgiveable that when councillors at least attempt to provide greater protection to residents that their efforts are seemingly undermined by an administration that either is so tardy, or repeatedly puts such resolutions on the back burner and hopes that all will be forgotten. When amendment after amendment which gives priority to further development is repeatedly rushed through, then the public has a right to ask what are our councillors doing and allowing to happen in their name.
Since Pilling moved this motion, we believe it is incumbent on him to make some public statement, or at least inquire as to what has happened with this proposed amendment.