Northern Beaches Mayor Michael Regan calls for development freeze
MAYOR Michael Regan has declared “enough is enough” after sending a letter to Planning Minister Anthony Roberts calling for a moratorium on incoming laws to fast track medium density housing.
Manly
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MAYOR Michael Regan has declared “enough is enough” after sending a letter to Planning Minister Anthony Roberts calling for a moratorium on incoming laws to fast track medium density housing.
The low-rise, medium-density house code would mean terraces, manor houses and dual occupancy homes could be approved without a development application from July.
The mayor slammed the proposal as “attempting to sideline councils and accelerate growth and development”.
He and Northern Beaches Council staff are expected to meet Mr Roberts along with Pittwater and Manly MPs Rob Stokes and James Griffin — who have supported the council — to put his case in coming weeks.
It follows Mr Roberts’ backdown on the code in Ryde and Canterbury-Bankstown because the councils argued the one-size fits all code was ill-suited to their areas.
“Ours is even more poorly suited, particularly when you look at road, sewerage, transport and school infrastructure” Cr Regan said. “Enough is enough in terms of uncontrolled planning.”
He likened the code to the State Environmental Planning Policy on affordable housing, which allows override of council planning policies to build boarding houses.
“If the boarding houses debacle hasn’t demonstrated what a farce the planning system is becoming and the mess that it leaves in suburbs, then this is going to be significantly worse,” he said.
Instead of waiting about 70 days for a DA to be processed, developers could have it done by a private certifier in about 20 days.
Cr Regan claimed, under the code, residents would get notified just 10 days before a medium-density development started, with no room for objections.
“Such an ad hoc system makes it difficult to plan for future growth.”
Last month Greater Sydney Commission’s North District boss Deborah Dearing said the peninsula needed to take its share of population growth. But Cr Regan said that was already the case, with the council on track to deliver on its housing targets with a new Frenchs Forest town centre near the new hospital and planned land releases at Ingleside.
He said state infrastructure was already not keeping up with population growth.
Mr Roberts has previously spruiked the code as providing faster approvals to help create a variety of living options to contribute to affordable housing.
He said two-storey height limits would ensure the size and scale of complying development would easily fit into established streetscapes.
But the council will request a year to merge the three former council’s planning policies into one.
“It would allow us to properly plan for where we want it to be, we want it in transport hubs, not in residential streets causing amenity impacts,” Cr Regan said.
The proposed new code, would allow manor houses (a two-storey, four-dwelling building) to be built on 600 sqm in Manly, Fairlight and Balgowlah. Currently it would require up to 1200 sqm.
In parts of the former Pittwater council area, Cr Regan said the changes meant dual occupancy was allowed at 60 per cent fewer square metres than current standards.
He said Warriewood, in particular, was a flood zone and the council’s policy, “done hand-in-glove with the Planning Department” allowed a 50-50 split between hard (concrete) and soft (grass) open space.
“The code allows for no, or significantly reduced landscape area for some forms of development.”