Public meeting to thrash out planning scrutiny concerns

Tasmanian residents say local community and council scrutiny is needed before all developments go ahead and planning rules need changing.

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TASMANIA’S local communities are rising up over planning laws which allow developments to be approved without any community or council scrutiny and close any avenue of appeal.

A public meeting will be held in Wynyard on Friday night to discuss what can be done to give local people more power in development decisions.

Organiser Nicholas Higgins, of Wynyard, says it is time to hit the reset button on Tasmania’s planning laws to wrestle power away from developers and give it back to local communities and the councils that represent them.

Three issues have highlighted the lack of local voices in development decisions, Mr Higgins said – the state government’s decision to relocate the Burnie court from the city’s CBD to the suburban UTAS campus with no public consultation, a proposal to build a massive wind farm in an environmentally sensitive area of Circular Head and a plan to turn a waterfront caravan park in Wynyard into a townhouse development.

Wynyard on the northwest seaside town near Burnie

Mr Higgins, who had a recent meeting with Planning Minister Roger Jaesnch, wants the current laws to be stripped laws back to bare bones, reviewed and for the threshold at which development applications lodged with local government become discretionary to be reviewed.

“At the moment an application for a suburban fence which is 50cm higher than the guidelines needs to go before council yet a project involving 29 three-storey houses on a small block on a prized piece of coastline does not,” Mr Higgins said.

The public meeting will be held on Friday at the Wynyard RSL in Goldie St, Wynyard at 6pm.

Guest speakers include Braddon MP Anita Down, State Coordinator of Planning Matters Alliance Tasmania Sophie Underwood, Burnie City Councillor Ken Dorsey and former political candidate and fisherman Craig Garland.

“The issue is about the standards that apply to residential zones and the thresholds which allow some developments to go through with no council approval and no right of appeal,” Mr Higgins said.

“Locals need a guaranteed voice in any development decision.”