This is a long post, but we believe an important one. Further, it’s important that residents fully understand the folly contained in the current Glen Eira Planning Scheme and how this has, and will continue to impact on them. As we’ve previously noted, VCAT has become the convenient scape goat. It is repeatedly blamed for ignoring council’s wishes, local amenity, etc. Councillors continue to bemoan unpopular VCAT decisions and wipe their hands of all responsibility as a consequence. Not once however has the real problem been addressed – ie. the planning scheme itself!

The Agenda Items for Tuesday night feature an important VCAT decision. There are some VCAT quotes included in the report, but the important bits – like the rationale for the decision and the loopholes and inconsistencies of the Urban Villages/Major Activity Centres policy – are of course omitted. We publish these in an extended version from the actual decision itself and ask readers to consider the following:

• How much blame can be levelled at VCAT as opposed to Council in this decision?
• Why has Glen Eira for the past 12 years refused to entertain the idea of permanent or interim height controls?

Here are the lowlights of the decision –

Upside Dental Pty Ltd and Tanfield Pty Ltd sought a planning permit from Glen Eira City Council for a five storey building on the land at 276 and 278 Neerim Road in Carnegie. The building would contain a basement car park, ground floor retail and residential apartments and consequently require permission for the use and the development. Council’s planning officers supported the application subject to conditions….. The Council decided to grant a permit, adopted the recommended conditions of its officers but added more conditions to reduce the development to four storeys and include a loading bay in the development.

1. The Council thus relies on policy, the zoning and the character of the site’s setting to reject a five storey response. It has expressly deleted the second storey from the design because it accepts that the recessive form of the fifth storey will, after the amendment, provide a recessive fourth storey level and so look like a three storey development.
2. Carnegie is identified in Melbourne 2030 as a Major Activity Centre. The role of a Major Activity Centre is amongst other outcomes, to ‘support intensive housing developments without conflicting with surrounding land-uses’. There are a range of other outcomes less relevant to the issues in this application, but which in summary can be said to support intensification of land use. In translation this means increased density in land use, be it commercial, retail, entertainment or residential. The increased intensity of land use co-located with public transport access and other services are to provide a range of community, social and environmental benefits.
3. 18.           These policy outcomes are not in dispute. The Council’s case recognises the role of the Carnegie Urban Village in supporting intensification in land use, as expressed in the Urban Village Policy. However, in my view the Council’s case is based on an interpretation of this policy that is not supported when a full view of this and other relevant planning policy is considered.  
4. Together these policy statements and objectives, along with the MSS are said by the Council to:

• ‘clearly promote the highest residential densities be located within the Urban Villages’; and
• ‘clearly states’ that the highest densities be located within the commercial centres with residential density declining with distance from the core of the centre.
• I agree that there is a clear policy direction for the highest levels of residential density to be located into the Urban Villages. I respectfully disagree that there is a ‘clear’ intention within this policy for a graduated residential density within an Urban Village, particularly in the case I have examined for Carnegie.

Nothing in the policy direction for Precinct 4 conveys any sense or need for a transition. The only reference to its relationship to other precincts or surrounding land is an expressed preference is for development in this precinct should not take the retail focus away from Koornang Road (i.e. the Retail Hub). If anything this policy direction seeks modest amounts of retail and so correspondingly greater use of the land for commercial, office or residential use.

The Council draws a contrast between policy for the Retail Hub and the Mixed Use precincts, specifically to the reference that it is in only the former where there is a direction for ‘increased building heights’ to be determined on the basis of site context and other urban design elements.

It is true that there is no specific reference to building height in policy guidance for the Mixed Use Precinct. It is also true that there is similarly no such reference to height in the surrounding residential precincts either. In the latter case, there is encouragement for increased density of residential development, a mix of density and housing type and encouragement for ‘managed change of the neighbourhood character’.

However it is also true that the design parameters said to guide development responses in the Retail Hub are as a matter of course commonly applied urban design considerations and do not highlight any particularly special characteristics for this precinct. Thus the same design guidance would be expected to also apply to other precincts within the Urban Village.

30.           Having thus considered this policy matrix, I am not persuaded that this policy or the Urban Village policy as a whole seeks any particularly special gradation in building height from the Retail Hub outward through the surrounding precincts. Indeed when one reflects on the design parameters specified for a consideration of height along the Retail Hub and applies them to these surrounding precents, it is likely that the large lots surrounding the Retail Hub will be able to accommodate higher built form rather than the other way.  

As I have set earlier, in the absence of specific direction about height in the Mixed Use precincts, the overall policy direction for increased density and intensity of land use in the Urban Villages applies and so there should be a reasonable expectation of increased height. References to height in Retail Hub are in the context of the words used in the policy:

• To accommodate office and residential use – a direction to promote these uses over others; and
• Establish guidance on determining an acceptable height, much of which adopts, as I have noted earlier, commonly applied non-controversial urban design principles.

34.           To suggest that the reference to height in this context and that an absence in other policy guidance imparts a higher order outcome for the Retail Hub reads far more into this guidance than would appear intended.

Scaling back development intensity within the urban village using ‘selective interpretation’ of policy would prevent the highest and best use of the land and be contrary to state and local policy seeking such outcomes for a major activity centre.

• Graduated scale within the Urban Village is a factor to be considered where the site is located in proximity to non-urban village residential zoned land.
• Existing residential land within the Urban Village will be subject to substantive change to accommodate the intensification of land use. Consequently existing conditions are a poor indicator of scale on which to base development responses within the central areas, including the core and mixed use areas. It is more appropriate to anticipate a scaling up of building form in proximity to these precincts, while sites with an interface to the residential hinterland play a role in transitioning built form to the scale of these latter areas.

39.           That said, the existing conditions of the hinterland will also not be static notwithstanding their designation as minimal change areas. Policy dictates that even within these areas some change, be it dual occupancies or new single dwellings of two storey form will see gradual changes in character.

40.           I therefore concur with the applicants and Mr McGurn that there is no policy reason why a five storey development cannot be considered for this site. In my view, if a five storey building can be accommodated on the basis of its design response, then it should be allowed to do so as it will achieve the applicable objectives set out for this site under the State and local planning policy frameworks. Specifically it will achieve an important policy objective established for the Urban Villages, to accommodate the greatest change in land use intensity and density.

44.           Consequently refusing higher scale buildings of more than four storeys then citing that are no higher scale buildings in the area becomes somewhat of a circular and fallacious argument.

Given my findings about policy direction and the surrounding site context I consider there is future capacity for higher order scale in this urban village/major activity centre. It is therefore appropriate to envisage that this well resolved proposal for five storeys will ultimately be seen in a setting of similar if not higher order scale within this and the adjoining Retail Hub and Mixed Use East precincts. 

The Council officers acknowledged that an increase in traffic levels would occur and perhaps be noticeable. However, the Council’s engineering staff conclude that the increase in traffic levels would not adversely affect the operation of Neerim or Kokaribb Roads or other local streets.