Application to expand century-old aged care home hits hitch

QUEENSLAND'S oldest residential aged care provider is looking to expand its services, applying to Toowoomba Regional Council to build 15 new rental units.

THEN AND NOW: Brodribb Home has come a long way from 1899 to 2018, but the trusted excellence remains the same. Picture: Contributed

QUEENSLAND'S oldest residential aged care provider is looking to expand its services, applying to Toowoomba Regional Council to build 15 new rental units.

Brodribb Home has lodged a development application with TRC to build 15 one-bedroom, self-sustained, single story units on land at 3B, 7A and 9 Brodribb St, Toowoomba City. 

But the proposal has hit a significant hitch. 

Current plans require the removal of a character home in Brodribb St. 

According to the DA lodged by town planner Urban Strategies, at the time of the pre-lodgement meeting with the council, "an application to remove a Neighbourhood Character House remained code assessable when lodged in conjunction with a code assessable development".

However, since that meeting in September 2017, the planning scheme has been amended so that the removal of a character home is now subject to an impact assessable application. 

"(The proposal was) supported in principal subject to detailed assessment and resolution of the issues raised in the pre-lodgement meeting," the planning report said. 

Despite lodging an impact assessable application for the removal of the character home at 9 Brodribb St, the council has come back to Brodribb Home, saying the council's heritage architect does not support the demolition of the character home at 9 Brodribb St. 

"9 Brodribb St, by its substantially intact form and massing, contributes positively to the character of the streetscape," the council said. 

"The submitted Heritage Impact Report provides insufficient evidence of the place being structurally unsound and uneconomically repairable."

The council also said that the town planner's Heritage Impact Report's suggestion that modern homes interspersed between surviving pre-WWII homes was "not considered justification for demolition of the surviving c1910's home at 9 Brodribb St". 

The council has requested an amended Heritage Impact Report that demonstrates the home is "structurally unsound and uneconomically repairable" including a report from a licensed structural engineer, schedule of costs for repairs, and more, and that it also shows how the place "does not make a positive contribution to the character of the local streetscape".

In a letter of support to the original development application, Brodribb Home CEO Pam Chipperfield said her organisation had not departed from its original intent more than a century ago - to provide housing to the aged poor. 

"After more than a century you can see that we still have a situation where governments of all levels - local, state and commonwealth - struggle with what can be done to house and care for the elderly in our society who do not have the means to fully support themselves," she wrote.

"Our application is to build one bedroom units that will be rented to elderly frail people of low means.

"These are the people who we intend to help, they do not have enough money to own their own home or unit, they have significant health issues but they want to remain living out in the community and not in a residential aged care facility."

Brodribb Home's town planners wrote to the council this week to pause the assessment process, off the back of the council's information request regarding the character home at 9 Brodribb St. 

Originally published as Application to expand century-old aged care home hits hitch