Indeed! – why the silence from Glen Eira council? Why can other councils go public and voice their strong opposition to the state government’s ad hoc planning agenda that lacks strategic justification, genuine consultation, and full transparency? Why can other councils’ websites include valuable summaries of the current state of play, plus links to relevant government documents and surveys? Nothing like this exists for Glen Eira residents who have much to lose given that we have 9 railway stations, and 13 nominated activity centres.
The latest outrage is featured in this Age article. Please note the stance taken by Boroondara and their officer’s (public) report.
Mid-rise developments could loom over suburbs, secret documents reveal
Mid-rise apartment developments could loom closer to heritage homes and overshadow solar panels, under confidential Victorian draft planning guidelines.
The Department of Transport and Planning is finalising new “deemed-to-comply” design standards for four- to six-storey residential developments that would exempt proposals from time-consuming appeals.
Camberwell resident Jane Oldham worries mid-rise apartment design will worsen under the new code and harm Boroondara, where heritage homes are prevalent.
The draft rules were recently shared with councils for feedback in a document marked confidential, but Boroondara Council revealed details at a meeting on Monday night.
Jane Oldham, of the Boroondara Community Group, spoke at the meeting against the draft standards, which propose approval for street setbacks of 4½ metres, lower than the already reduced six-metre requirement under the low-rise code announced earlier this year.
Oldham was concerned that the changes would lead to mid-rise buildings jammed together, reducing privacy, sunlight and green space.
“Why people like suburbs such as Camberwell, I think, is the heritage, the character, the greenery,” Oldham said. “And that will definitely be lost. We can do better.”
The Allan government has argued the mid-rise code would make the planning system easier and boost housing supply while maintaining amenity.
The standards have not been finalised.
In a statement, Boroondara Mayor Sophie Torney said the broader community deserved honesty and criticised the state government for keeping under wraps the options that have been canvassed.
“Boroondara believes in open, transparent decision-making,” she said. “Communities have a right to know what’s being proposed in their own neighbourhoods before decisions are made, not after.”
Boroondara Mayor Sophie Torney says the state has ignored locals in their plans for the Hawthorn, Glenferrie, Auburn and Kew Junction activity centres.Credit: Eamon Gallagher
The new mid-rise code is most applicable to the Housing Choice and Transport Zones in Melbourne’s 60 new activity centres, which are slated for four- to six-storey development.
Affluent eastern suburbs are overrepresented in the state government’s activity centre program, as the state government says outer suburbs have shouldered too much of the home-building load in recent decades. The only way to make housing fairer for young Victorians is to build more homes faster,” a state government spokesperson said. “This is exactly why we’ve been overhauling our planning system, because the status quo is not an option.”
Boroondara is among several councils that have strongly criticised the approach so far.
On Monday night, Torney expressed particular concern that the proposed mid-rise standards did not have a clause to prevent buildings from blocking sunlight to solar panels, which was included in the low-rise standards announced earlier this year.
“We’re literally building shadows over the very homes we want to electrify, and not ensuring new apartment builds potentially have solar,” Torney said.
“That makes no sense to me, and it’s in direct contrast to the government’s energy policies.”
In their submission to the government, Boroondara council officers also took issue with a proposal to deem bedrooms compliant if their sole sunlight source was a window facing an internal-light courtyard, rather than an outward-facing window.
The proposed 4.5-metre setback standard also caused consternation, as the council said it would incentivise higher development while the minimum low-rise setback was six metres.
“The irony at the moment [is] under the existing scenario for a single dwelling, it has to be further back again,” Boroondara’s urban living director Scott Walker said on Monday.
“Now that’s going to get changed … but we’ve got quite a paradoxical standard scenario at the moment.”
Whitehorse City Council also expressed “significant concerns” about the draft mid-rise standards at a meeting in September.
Planning Institute of Victoria president Pat Fensham, having viewed the mid-rise code proposals in the Boroondara council document, said he was also concerned there appeared to be no provision for councils to consider local design issues.
He argued this meant site-specific environmental problems could be missed under a narrow assessment of whether a mid-rise proposal was “deemed to comply” with built-form standards.
“You can’t anticipate all the impacts. Local context matters,” he said.
YIMBY Melbourne lead organiser Jonathan O’Brien, whose group has urged governments to address “the missing middle” of housing development, supported the state government’s overall approach when he viewed the proposals detailed in the Boroondara council documents.
“We see codification like this, even if it’s imperfect, as an absolute improvement,” he said.
Glen Eira Debates 
October 9, 2025 at 11:56 AM
Silence is basically acquiescence or agreement. That has been the Glen Eira story for over a decade now when it comes to planning and over development. All through the mess that was the housing strategy and then the structure plans for the major activity centres we saw what council’s approach was – cram as many dwellings in as possible. They were even in favour of huge increases in site coverage for sites in Carnegie – well before the government followed. Then the housing strategy also intimated that there would be a reduction in the requirements for onsite parking to allow developers to build more. It’s joke that there is now a parking survey that makes no real mention of this intention. The only conclusion I can come to is that this council has no desire to fight for its residents. The administration and councillors are happy to leave it all up to government whilst occasionally mouthing some comforting words that mean nothing.
October 9, 2025 at 12:40 PM
Why the silence?
Because the council has no problem with destroying our suburbs.
A reasonable planning regime would take into account the need for more housing and the current housing already existing in neighbourhoods. It would allow maybe 4 storey apartments on main roads and also specify better apartments, not the shoe boxes we currently see. Apartments where people can raise a family, like in Europe, where you get 2 and 3 bedroom apartments with decent size bedrooms and living areas along with court yards in the middle so you get natural light in to the apartment from many angles. But that wouldn’t be profitable enough would it?
October 10, 2025 at 12:08 PM
Nine railway stations that’s a lot. As some of the taller apartment blocks now reach the 10-plus year mark, the signs of premature decay are becoming obvious. By the time many hit 20 years, major extremely expensive makeovers will likely be needed if they’re even possible.
Some buildings still look okay, but others are clearly in trouble. One apartment in McKinnon has had a tarp nailed over a missing window for the fourth year running, who knows what legal or ownership mess underlies that failure.
We’re seeing water-logged, rotting balconies, roof leaks that can’t be fixed, blue-board cladding with cracking joints and peeling tape, the list of building defects is long. We should be able to expect more from council oversight, but the blind-eye culture and rip-offs continue.
The City of Glen Eira is becoming a very ugly place, and no amount of twisted semantics in the form of PR spin by complicit bureaucrats can hide what our eyes see and our brains feel.
October 11, 2025 at 9:09 AM
We shouldn’t have to be guessing and yet here we are. A possible reason is that Council is ideologically split. We know one councillor argued for a development that failed to comply with multiple standards. Presumably she supports the State Government’s efforts to weaken standards for some. Council has historically not supported having diverse dwelling types and sizes in the area it has targeted for high density development. It has chosen not to invest in the infrastructure required, and has supported the State Government’s own failures to invest. Open space? Access to sunlight? Off-street parking? Bike lanes? Drainage? Healthy mix of demographics?
Another possible reason is that real council power lies with the CEO and staff. Most council decisions are made under delegated authority with little policy guidance. On planning matters, it is left to those officers who are also members of the development industry. Little surprise then that their decisions are heavily influenced by what is good for their future employment prospects.
In one letter to me, Council explained why it ignored standards, arguing that standards provide “too much safety”. According to VCAT, Council has argued that developments shouldn’t have to comply with the accessway standards for the now ubiquitous basement carparks of multi-storey developments–not the slope, nor the sight triangles, nor the adjacent fence height. This was all to allow a developer to squeeze another unit in. Profit before all else.
October 11, 2025 at 2:21 PM
You are correct, we saw exemption after exemption trotted by the planning dept. Waiving visitors car parking spaces, the allowing of car stackers, I wonder how many of these are still working after 10/20 year up the track and if there is any oversight to make sure they are working. Three bedroom dwelling masquerading as two, the third being labeled a study, to avoid planning necessities.
Sanctioned rorts everywhere one looks.
October 13, 2025 at 12:56 AM
Good to find Glen Eira Debates is still alive. Our monopoly Lab-Lib State Government is between a rock and a hard place: how to stay in power while dismantling democracy, housing equity, and good planning (along with universal health care and education)? Does maintaining a real estate industry that keeps the state government in power while it copes with the disgruntled houseless and homeless lead to Trump-style government? Is US-style politics invading Australia?