Hastings Point hopes for Locality Plan

HASTINGS Point residents hope final permanent controls will continue to limit development to low-scale buildings.

HASTINGS Point residents who are happy with a temporary ban on blocks of units in the village hope final permanent controls will continue to limit development to low-scale buildings.

Tweed Shire Council last week voted to place on public exhibition its intended ban on any more than two dwellings per block of land in Hastings Point, but the controls are only interim measures until permanent control plans can be introduced, maybe in a year.

Hastings Point community spokesman John O'Reilly said yesterday that the interim controls followed a recommendation which was made in April last year by the urban design expert Ruker and Associates.

He said the company had found the current Tweed Shire development Control plan was “inadequate to protect the unique character of Hastings Point” and that large unit blocks were inappropriate for the area.

He said the consultant recommended a Locality Plan be designed for the whole settlement for all building types and “until that was done, it would be injudicious to allow multi-dwelling development of any more than two dwellings per development or greater than two storeys in height”.

Mr O'Reilly said the Hastings Point community “is interested only in multi-dwelling development which is consistent with the existing low-scale character and environment”.

He said development should “allow the environment to dominate rather than buildings”.

“This type of development proposed by the community is entirely consistent with law and policy, including the Coastal Design Guidelines, Coastal Policy and the Far North Coast Regional Strategy to name just a few,” Mr O'Reilly said.

“These coastal laws and policies were introduced to protect the many hamlets and small villages like Hastings Point that exist on the NSW Coast which are not dominated by large unit blocks.

“These policies stress that mistakes of the past (inappropriately large buildings) should not justify the continuation of the same in the future.”

Originally published as Hastings Point hopes for Locality Plan