The new year has not got off to a great start in our municipality with the release of the latest agenda. Planning in Glen Eira remains incompetent, ad hoc, and entirely pro development. The current agenda proves this in spades. Council can of course now cite Wynne and the Labor government as a very convenient scapegoat for the proposed changes to the current amendments/structure plans for Bentleigh & Carnegie. This however, does not absolve them of years upon years of inaction and disastrous strategic planning.
A brief summary of the agenda is in order.
- All heights for strategic sites/urban renewal sites have now become ‘discretionary’ rather than mandatory as they currently are. That of course means that developers can go for broke in terms of heights.
- Our estimation is that about 180 sites in Bentleigh and Carnegie have been ‘upgraded’ so that they will now go from 2 storey height limits to either 3 or 4 storey height. Others that are currently 3 storey will now be permitted 4 storey. No justification for any of these changes has been provided. Nor is there any explanation provided as to why Godfrey Street in Bentleigh from number 9 to 27 will now be assigned a 4 storey height limit. Why not number 29 Godfrey Street, especially since the argument proposed by council is that they are attempting to ‘fix’ the problems of 2013 when single streets had multiple zonings. This kind of decision is simply repeating the mistakes of the past. Literally unbelievable! The same questions apply to changes to other streets throughout these suburbs.
- We also have an admission that council’s ‘uplift’ policy, that was based entirely on what Melbourne City Council had created was a definite ‘no/no’ in order to determine what constitutes ‘community benefit’. They have now been told that what is required is a Development Contributions Levy. Of course, council’s response to this (after promising it in the 2016 planning scheme review) is:
Incorporating a Development Contributions Plan into the Planning Scheme for Carnegie will not be able to be undertaken as part of Amendment C184 due to the length and complexity of this process and may be worth examining at a later date.
So is this another council promise out the window?
- Gone as well is the useless Quality Design Guidelines that was so vague and nebulous that you could drive a truck through it.
- Most important is the simple fact that this council does not have an up to date Housing Strategy. The last one was done in 2001. Instead we now have the smoke and mirrors exercise of a ‘city plan’ that is supposed to do the work of examining closely every single street in the municipality. It doesn’t come within cooee of a decent housing strategy. Also worth pointing out to readers is that countless other councils have had housing strategies for well over a decade and have reviewed them continually. Not Glen Eira. The question that then needs asking is how can you perform decent strategic planning when no such overall strategy or policy exists. As per normal, this council does things arse backwards. First, and only because you’ve been ordered to, you get structure plans done, and then worry about a housing strategy!!!
- Wynne and the department also recommends the use of Neighbourhood Character Overlays. For the past few years, council has been bent on removing NCOs from the planning scheme! So is it back to the drawing board again on this one?
- As for the schedules to the zones themselves, council is quite happy with what already exists, instead of improving things like permeability, site coverage, etc. We’ve pointed out previously how other councils make a mockery of Glen Eira in that they have even 40% permeability in the GRZ zones whilst Glen Eira is stuck on its meagre 20%!!! Another big opportunity lost to do something positive! RGZ 4 is the most remarkable. Here site coverage can be 90% and permeability a fabulous 5%! Well done council!
There is much much more in this agenda that requires commenting upon. We will provide updates in the coming days. However, we believe that it is important that all those residents who will be affected by changes in zoning to fully comprehend what the changes will mean.
Below is council’s list of the proposed changes:
Glen Eira Debates 
January 31, 2020 at 5:39 PM
945 pages!? Somebody is hoping councillors don’t read them. First rule of politics is to spread the blame so that nobody ultimately is accountable. Councillors were derelict in proposing something that failed to implement the objectives of planning in Victoria. The minister is a member of a disgraced government, didn’t even have the courage to face ordinary members of the public prior to the last election. Now ingloriously associated with the Corkman debacle and the Casey investigation. Lots of changes to what Council asked for but no strategic analysis or rationale…fairly typical of the Andrews government. On Monday we will get a sliver of insight into the political favours purchased through donations. Before Council rubberstamps its officer recommendation, Wynne should have to front the residents of Glen Eira, justify each requested change and explain how they’re consistent with the objectives of planning in victoria. Why waste our time and effort with exhibiting the changes? He can impose them on us, as he eventually will.
January 31, 2020 at 5:56 PM
Not on that we get a 945 page agenda. No one will read it or only a handful of people. That’s the council plan clearly. Keep the bastards ignorant until to late. Thanks for the post so that I can be informed.
January 31, 2020 at 7:06 PM
There can be no question as to how bad this council is on planning.
February 1, 2020 at 7:59 AM
Glen Eira again takes the trophy for being the developers best friend.
February 1, 2020 at 9:14 AM
Think I’m right in remembering that residents were told we would get a neighbourhood character policy. That’s gone. We were also told there would be a levy for infrastructure. That’s now in the never never. They are terrific on promises and lousy on delivering. Suspect this was always the plan to lull residents into the belief that they care until it’s too late to stop the development juggernaut. Talking with friends from elsewhere we agreed that this lot rank way up there as the worst council in the state.
February 1, 2020 at 4:20 PM
The 2020 Open Space “Refresh” in the Agenda is basically a “Re-swindle” and admission to just how appallingly wrong its predecessor the 2014 Open Space Planning Document/Strategy was.
The 2014 document with all its expense and all its fanfair on its release by the councillors was planned to take us through to 2024-5.
This “refresh” which looks suspiciously like a code word for fixing the blunders in the estimations in growth and density and large expansions in the free-for-all development zones, is a wonder to behold.
The refresh still upholds the farcical levels of local and neighbourhood open space that couldn’t and doesn’t cater for even a fraction of the uses required by residents, and what the refresh says it’s meant to do.
Unbelievably it still talks about planting urban forests to help ameliorate the summer heat waves, and community gardens and special landscape features with water features etc. all this is such a sick joke, as in reality all we get is new monster pavilions with extended car parking areas, less trees and more concrete or bitumen in our open space areas.
One the most important or revealing facts the 2019/2020 revisionists could have supplied would be the ratio between active and passive open space and environmental open space within our city, this would show residents how our open space is being used, but once again this breakdown is purposely missing.
Although sadly its does say we a down to a meager 8 sq. metres of open space per resident and falling.
How would like to see you 8 metres used?