The infamous C110 is now available. We will be commenting on this amendment over the next few postings. This post concentrates on the Housing & Residential parameters as stated. All extracts are verbatim quotes from the document and uploaded here.
This amendment has been prepared by the Minister for Planning who is the planning authority for this amendment.The amendment has been made at the request of the Glen Eira City Council.
COMMENT: So much for the myth that Council did not know well and truly beforehand that community consultation would not be occurring. Nor does it excuse the fact that the date submitted to the department was well before the public questions on consultation were tabled at council meetings. The responses were thus untruthful and deceitful.
The amendment applies the NRZ to the Minimal Change areas, the RGZ to the Housing Diversity areas and the GRZ to the small areas around the periphery of the Housing Diversity areas and along transport routes.
COMMENT: Nothing could be clearer than that HOUSING DIVERSITY HAS EXPANDED! Yet Council, apart from admitting changes to the Alma Club site and one other, still maintain that nothing much has changed and that the amendment is simply a ‘translation’ of current zones.
Another objective of Council is to promote the integrated planning of the city. Integrated planning involves working with the community, residents, traders, service providers and other stakeholders to enhance the quality of Glen Eira’s suburbs and their environmental, economic and social sustainability. Integrated planning involves looking beyond traditional town planning solutions. It is important to encourage people to participate in the development of their city and to develop overall visions and plans for areas. It involves holistically looking at a wide range of issues in the local community including; infrastructure, social planning, economic development, recreation and capital works.
COMMENT: So much for the spin versus the reality! So much for ‘integrated planning’ that involves the community. To include such blatant propaganda in an official document that has no relationship to actual events is both insulting to residents and says much about the workings of council.
- Facilitate high quality urban design and architecture that will enhance neighbourhood character.
- Encourage the retention of existing vegetation, in particular vegetation and trees which contribute to the City’s tree canopy.
- Encourage energy efficient housing design, landscape design, construction materials and techniques that will minimise environmental impacts in residential developments.
- Encourage residents and developers to adopt more environmentally friendly practices such as reducing water usage, recycling and reducing energy use.
- Encourage rainwater retention and usage in larger developments.
- Ensure that the community is involved in decision making about their neighbourhood.
- Ensure that the traffic impacts are adequately addressed when considering new residential development.
- Ensure that where new development places an increased burden on infrastructure it contributes to the upgrading of infrastructure.
COMMENT: All motherhood statements that have lacked and continue to lack strategies and policies to enforce these objectives. We have commented numerous times on council’s refusal to introduce Environmental Sustainable Design, water saving design, traffic management precinct plans into its planning scheme. These sentences merely continue the moratorium on action. They are intended to sound good, but are meaningless. How wonderful too that ‘infrastructure’ gets a mention when council REMOVED ITS DEVELOPMENT CONTRIBUTIONS LEVY. Ironically, they may now be forced to re-introduce it!
- Using the Commercial Centres Policy to strengthen the core of strip shopping centres, identify declining centres and identify new opportunities for non-retail functions.
- Using the Monash Medical Centre Precinct Structure Using the Non Residential Uses in Residential Zones Policy to provide some certainty when planning to establish non residential uses in residential zones (eg medical centres, childcare centres).
- Using the Heritage Policy to manage new development (including additions, alterations and demolition of all or parts of a heritage place) in all areas covered by the Heritage Overlay.
COMMENT: These sentences are possibly the most damning in the entire document since they exhibit for all to see the sheer incompetence of council’s and the minister’s planning department(s). It simply reveals that Glen Eira council either does not check its work carefully enough, or that it does not even know what is in its own planning scheme. PLEASE NOTE: Council does not have a ‘commercial centres policy’ – that was removed over a year ago as was the Monash Medical centre (and it was never a structure plan!). Childcare centres are lumped together with medical centres. It seems that Glen Eira planners don’t know that they introduced a separate ‘childcare’ policy and removed it from the ‘non residential uses’ quite recently. Sloppy, inept, and totally unprofessional!
FUTURE STRATEGIC WORK
- For housing diversity areas, in conjunction with Melbourne Water, further investigating the capacity of drainage infrastructure to accommodate multi-unit development.
- Developing local structure plans / urban design frameworks to guide development in the neighbourhood centres.
- Investigating a vegetation management program which considers appropriate controlsand guidelines to ensure vegetation protection.
- Developing environmental sustainability guidelines for residential development bydrawing together the best practice in this area to ensure that new residential development is more environmentally sustainable
- Developing “suburb” plans for each suburb which integrate land use and developmentplanning, with planning for infrastructure, capital works, recreation, parks and gardens,street trees and business development.
- Developing local area traffic management plans and parking precinct plans to control the effects of parking and traffic intrusion in residential areas.
- Implementing local area traffic management changes in existing areas in consultation with communities to improve safety and amenity and discourage use by inappropriate traffic.
- Investigating mechanisms which require developers to undertake street tree planting.
COMMENT: Promises, promises which we believe will never be introduced or undertaken given the record of this council over the past decade and its abject failure to make a move on most of these aspirations. The 2010 Planning Scheme Review, plus the 2011 Planisphere report recommended reviewing Heritage Areas. This hasn’t been touched since 1996! Readers also need to note that the accompanying ‘policies’ in this document go as far back as 1999. The promises of years and years ago remain the unfulfilled promises of today. This does not fill us with confidence that any of these ‘future’ plans will be acted upon – but they sure as hell sound good for any resident who might decide to actually read the amendment and/or the planning scheme.
Glen Eira Debates 
August 23, 2013 at 1:04 PM
If housing diversity has expanded then the claim that 78 or 80 percent of areas are protected has got to be questioned. From the maps the blue and brown areas have grown remarkably.
August 23, 2013 at 3:05 PM
If the translation had been neutral, in that the changes were confined to the existing boundaries of Council’s Minimal Change and Housing Diversity areas, then it could be argued that consultation was not required. Instead multiple Minimal Change areas have been moved into GRZ or RGZ, and that is not appropriate without exhibition. The Minister’s Explanatory Report doesn’t explain it, making the inaccurate claim that it is in alignment with the current local policies. He also claims the Amendment applies RGZ to the Housing Diversity Areas, which is wildly inaccurate as Figure 1 straight underneath the claim shows.
Still unexplained is just who requested the Minister to prepare the Amendment and why. Normally you would expect Council to seek authorisation to prepare an Amendment, and apply for exemption from giving notice if deemed appropriate. Unless done secretly in a closed meeting, there has been no Council resolution to request the Minister to prepare the Amendment. Maybe Cr Delahunty will state who she lost the argument with such that Council has ensured the community is *not* involved in decision making about their neighbourhood.
The Future Strategic Work section appears not to have been updated for over 7 years and the majority of reference documents date back to the previous Millenium. Predictions in Housing and Residential Development Strategy haven’t been updated, so the additional 6000 dwellings projected back circa 2005 to be needed in 2021 have now been replaced with…umm…6000 on top of whatever has been constructed over 8+ years. The Minister admits the views of relevant agencies were sought via Amendment C25, from 2004.
Height limits are welcome although not applied universally across all residential zones. The rest of the amenity standards appear to be as discretionary as they have always been. I would welcome the Minister or Council explaining how they are binding, if indeed they are.
C110 appears to have been rushed and done carelessly—I’m assuming the inconsistencies were mostly not deliberate.
August 23, 2013 at 3:06 PM
Maps are difficult to read even when blown up 400 times, but the housing diversity zones have definitely blown out to include streets that previously were exempt from this zone. So more humbug from council.
August 23, 2013 at 3:22 PM
What a nauseating piece of crap.
Particularly the part that reads “Integrated planning involves working with the community, residents, traders, service providers and other stakeholders to enhance the quality of Glen Eira’s suburbs and their environmental, economic and social sustainability. … It is important to encourage people to participate in the development of their city”
They deliberately prevented everyone from participation.
Here’s a tip for Pilling – stop making vitriolic posts and actually think about what it means to be a Councillor.
August 23, 2013 at 5:26 PM
We’ve learnt that the Glen Eira Residents’ Association has put up a post on the zones that is well worth a read – http://geresidents.wordpress.com
August 23, 2013 at 7:34 PM
Council should be as embarrassed as hell over all these errors and so should the people who sit in at the department. They get paid a princely sum and if this happened in private industry they’d be out on their ear. There’s no excuse on earth that should pardon this kind of sloppiness.
August 23, 2013 at 9:04 PM
There is plenty of embarassment to be spread around and the biggest truckload deserves to lob on Councillors. They sat back and did nothing – from their comments at the last Council Meeting they didn’t even not even review the officer’s zone designations but that didn’t stop them from getting up and spruiking the administrative line. Comments such as what a great job, thanks for the good work, direct translation – are a load of f*ckiing crap. And as for we didn’t neet to consult because we you knew what residents wanted, it can be translated into we knew what you wanted because we have been ignoring it for years.
Spruiking the party line of direct translation is the biggest (ie. mega sh*t load) example of pathetic Councillor performance. The biggest single investment in my life (both financial and emotional) has just been totally destroyed by some planning officer wally who probably doesn’t live in Glen Eira. Instead he/her lives in a municipality that allows him/her input into the zone changes and actually listens to that input – “gee whiz this persons knows there sh*t”- sh*t learned at my expense. Councillor’s indifference has just shot Tovan Akas Avenue, Bentleigh, from minimal change to Residential Growth Zone 2 (four storeys).
Am I bitter, you damn well bet I am. I didn’t get lipservice input into the decision and Council’s application of Ministerial Direction means it is set in concrete before I am even advised of it.
F*CKllll
August 23, 2013 at 9:09 PM
The scheming, secrecy and back room dealing that has gone on with this amendment is the bottom of the barrel stuff. Glen Eira council must congratulate itself for sinking to the lowest levels of what government should be. Councillors should also pat themselves on the back for their willing aiding and abetting the biggest fraud ever perpetrated on residents since the c11 and c25 amendments.
August 23, 2013 at 9:41 PM
You are forgetting C60 … secretive, unresponsive select committee (Pilling, Esakoff, Lipshutz and Hyams) who didn’t even bother to attend community consultations or äny of the so called “‘Independent planning panel” hearings. End result
1) 13 storey office tower dwarfing historic Caulfield Station gone from 13 storeys to 20 and still rising
2) residential dwellings from 1200, to 1500, to 1500+ and still rising.
3) on site parking requirements “greater than any comparable development” but in reality only the same as a 3 storey development on the fringes of an housing diversity area. But they we got the MRC to pay the cost of the restricted parking signage ($40 a pop) in surrounding streets. Has the C60 development been excluded from the residential parking scheme – good question but it is yet another hidden detail..
August 23, 2013 at 9:48 PM
Meh, C60 was the really special, shove it to the residents, Council special by Pilling and the gang.
August 23, 2013 at 11:27 PM
This one’s Newton and the gang’s and shove in the dpcd and minister. Rotten business. Wonder which developers are their friends?
August 23, 2013 at 9:13 PM
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-08-23/tribunal-chief-addresses-vcat-criticisms/4909588
August 24, 2013 at 7:30 AM
Absolutely gobsmacking to hear Justice Greg Garde, VCAT head honcho, say VCAT is legally bound to adhere to Planning Schemes when in fact it is not. VCAT is only required to “consider” Planning Schemes.
What’s even more gobsmacking is that despite all the wonderous claims of “certainty” now being attached to the rammed through Glen Eira Planning Scheme and the whole concept of the reform zones is that VCAT is still only required to “consider” them.
The marketing of the reform zones by the State Government and Glen Eira Council is pure distortion and should be eligible for the “Best Fiction 2013” Award.
Unless the rules governing VCAT change there is no more “certainty” than there is now. The fact that changes to the VCAT rules and zone implementation have not occurred simultaneously is a pretty sure indicator that there is no intention to change them.
August 24, 2013 at 11:52 AM
Its a little more prescriptive than that. S.16 of PAEA states:
“A planning scheme is binding on every Minister, government department, public authority and municipal council except to the extent that the Governor in Council, on the recommendation of the Minister, directs by Order published in the Government Gazette.”
At the heart of the problem is that every amenity standard other than height is discretionary, most “Decision Guidelines” aren’t guidelines, there is no clear definition of “merit”, and VCAT doesn’t “stand in the shoes” of the decision-maker when making its own decisions. It ignores everything in the Local Government Act that applies to Council when making a decision, such as the “long term and cumulative effects of decisions”. It can and does use expressions like “acceptable loss of amenity” without identifying the policy it is relying upon. Its use of discretion is in effect the means by which it makes policy.
August 24, 2013 at 5:48 PM
Reprobate – I freely concede that you are obviously much more learned rules/policies/guidlelines than I am – I won’t argue on the how or what VCAT uses to make it’s decisions or as justification for it’s decisions.
However, regardless of the how or what, the crux of my comment is valid. Unless the rules/policies/guidelines (ie. my hows and whats) surrounding the VCAT decision process/es are amended there is nothing to prevent VCAT continuing “its use of discretion” under the new zones. These have not been changed, therefore, claims of “certainty” are at best misleading, at worst false.
August 24, 2013 at 12:15 PM
I’ve been reading the minimal change specifications in the hope that they would be a vast improvement on what was there previously. This isn’t the case. Leaving aside the question of what powers will still belong to Vcat, or how much of minimal change has been converted into housing diversity, the amendment does not really provide the added “protection” that council’s publicity states. Much of the language remains as “encourage” rather than enforce. Lot sizes will still be the determining factor as to whether multi unit developments are given the nod. Open space and privacy is broken into fragments so it will be acceptable to have 40m instead of 60m all in one place. Street setbacks are dependent on what people opposite and alongside have. So if their new developments are practically on the footpath then the developer will do the same. The worst aspect is that of precedent. If the street already has medium density units then that’s the green light for more medium density units. I can’t see anything here that comes close to what has been promised. The schedules basically repeat what was there before apart from height. Even the 50% for site coverage is alterable depending on whether the property is on a corner and a couple of other factors.
Looking at all this and has been said about the number of subdivisions in minimal change, then the future prospect for single houses and streets that retain any character is fast disappearing. Add to this the possibility of opening up doctor’s surgeries, or fast food shops in areas close to commercial centres, and they don’t need a permit and people won’t be notified, then the best scenario is that minimal change will now be predominantly 2 units per block at 2 storey height limit and the worst case scenario is that planners won’t even adhere to these basic precepts because they haven’t in the past. Vcat will be as busy as ever I suspect.
August 24, 2013 at 9:41 PM
Hyams the (MODERATORS: PHRASE DELETED) “two times” mayor said in the last Council meeting as well as in the newspaper, that 80 percent of areas are protected. He was proud that the Council was the first in Victoria to get the new residential zones issued by the Minister of Planning. As we all know, (MODERATORS: rest of sentence deleted)
Hyams will go down in history for (MODERATORS: rest of sentence deleted). Rumour has it that Hyams and Esakoff are planning to be Mayor in December 2013. Guys, what do you all think?
..
August 25, 2013 at 7:36 AM
A huge no to that.
August 25, 2013 at 6:28 PM
Are the other Councillors so dumb to let this happen time and time again to those who think they own the Council? Shame to even give a thought to this.