Below we feature some of the public questions which were submitted for the last council meeting. As per usual, residents received ‘responses’ rather than ‘answers’.

QUESTION: Council recently abandoned the Bentleigh and Carnegie structure plan due to the lack of a housing strategy and yet on tonight’s meeting agenda is the Glen Huntly structure plan (item 8.4). Should not Council wait to vote on Glen Huntly structure plan until after the completion of the housing strategy?

RESPONSE: The development of a Housing Strategy before the adoption of this structure plan is not necessary for this centre. While Glen Huntly will provide for additional housing, the structure plan is primarily focussed on the commercial core. This is quite different to Council’s other structure plans in Bentleigh, Carnegie and Elsternwick which also include large residential areas.

As a Major Activity Centre, there is an expectation that this centre will change in alignment with State Government Policy. The structure plan seeks to get on the front foot and manage the height and form of buildings that we expect following the removal of the level crossings

The preparation of the draft Housing Strategy will give appropriate consideration to the role of Glen Huntly as part of its development.

COMMENT(S) –  

The response given is literally baffling for several reasons:

  1. When buildings of 5, 6, and 8 storeys are proposed, then upper floors will inevitably consist of apartments. To therefore argue that this structure plan is only concentrating on the commercial sector and hence a housing strategy is unnecessary flies in the face of all common sense. How many apartments these sites can contain is surely an essential consideration in meeting the forecast population growth and the accompanying housing needs for Glen Huntly. Remember, the population growth according to council’s own published data is a mere 1000 over a 15 year period from 2021 to 2036.  That’s the role of a housing strategy. To determine need for each activity centre, and the entire municipality, and then to apportion this requisite growth across the entire municipality.  To pre-empt such analysis is not planning. It is simply assigning huge sectors of Glen Eira to unsustainable overdevelopment.

QUESTION 2

QUESTION: Following extensive resident feedback and inaction from Council, in 2015 the Minister for Planning compelled Council to undertake a Planning Scheme Review with a focus on controls for activity centres. In 2019 as part of the Planning Scheme Amendment C184, Council Officers belatedly highlighted the need for a Housing Strategy advising that the C184 amendment was not underpinned by an adopted municipal-wide plan. While Council failed to progress a Housing Strategy in 2019, it subsequently aborted Amendment C184 in 2021 in the absence of a clear strategic justification including a Housing Strategy. Based on advice from Officer’s, the Structure Plan controls for Bentleigh is now scheduled to be completed in 2024, some nine years after the Minister’s direction which is appalling.

Given this long history, why then have Council Officers recommended the adoption of a Structure Plan for Glen Huntly without a Housing Strategy?

Given that the response to this question consists primarily of a verbatim repetition to the first question, we have only included the opening two paragraphs of the response.

RESPONSE: It is noted that there are some inaccuracies and selective representation of facts in your opening preamble. Despite this, the answer to your question regarding the adoption for a Structure Plan in advance of the completion of the Housing Strategy is as follows :

Council began preparation of the Glen Huntly Structure Plan in mid 2019 in response to the announcement of the Government’s intention to progress level crossing removals in the area. The level crossing removals are expected to bring about a renewed focus and opportunity for change in Glen Huntly once complete. The preparation of a structure plan would assist guiding the height and form of future development, recognising its role as a Major Activity Centre, as designated by the State Government.

COMMENT:  If council does not agree with the comments made by the resident, then why not provide a full rebuff of those comments? How about explaining, itemising, and justifying the claim that there are ‘inaccuracies’ contained in the question? As far as we know, the resident was 100% correct in his claims!

More importantly, we now have to consider the entire argument as to why a housing strategy is not required prior to the adoption of the structure plan because, it is claimed, the focus is primarily on the commercial areas. Then why, did the council officer state in his report of the 16th March, 2021 (when Amendment C184 was abandoned/rejected) the following:

A housing strategy would also enable Council to introduce more tailored built form controls for its commercial and mixed use zones within activity centres, based on a better understanding of where and how growth will occur across the rest of the municipality

The housing strategy would provide Council with a municipal-wide framework for density,
based on demographic and character analysis and inform all of Council’s strategic planning
activities. (Page 116 of the agenda)

Doesn’t the above contradict what Council is currently stating? And doesn’t it illustrate perfectly the role of a housing strategy that needs to be completed before the adoption of structure planning? Council can’t have it both ways. Consistency, and dare we say, complete transparency, has never been this council’s strong point!