Glen Eira residents have been told repeatedly that structure planning and associated Design and Development Overlays (DDOs) CANNOT provide MANDATORY height restrictions for commercial sites unless they are heritage listed or have other extenuating conditions. This of course ignores the fact that other councils have been successful in having their strategic planning approved and gazetted.

 The most recent example comes from Bayside City Council for the Highett Neighbourhood Activity Centre.  Here is the current zoning applying to this DDO. Note the Commercial zoning and the fact that these sites are NOT under any heritage overlay.

Here is the Bayside gazetted DDO – as recently as September this year!. Please note the 3 and 4 storey MANDATORY height limits.

Why has Bayside managed to implement a MANDATORY 3 and 4 storey maximum height limit on these sites, in comparison to Glen Eira’s 6 storey discretionary height for Caulfield South, Caulfield North and East Bentleigh? Why is our council so compliant and unwilling to achieve what other councils achieve? What is really going on within our planning department?

After 7 years of incompetency, we are still back at square one, where the agenda remains more and more development regardless of what it means for residential amenity and meeting community concerns.