By Adam Carey
An expanding girls’ grammar school in Canterbury has sparked a war with its neighbours, who have accused it of parasitically encroaching on their homes, eroding heritage and lowering property values, after the school went to court and overturned a decades-old restrictive covenant near its main campus.
The covenant, created by residents anxious to protect their neighbourhood from being dominated by the high-fee school, restricts 10 properties near the school from being used for any educational or religious purposes.
Residents of a heritage estate in Canterbury have lost a VCAT case against Strathcona Girls Grammar.Credit: Chris Hopkins
Strathcona Girls Grammar School, which has been in Canterbury for 100 years, has bought 10 houses in the neighbouring residential estate, converting some of them to an early learning centre, administration and a uniform shop, and leasing others out as homes.
It applied to Boroondara City Council to overturn the restrictive covenant on three homes it owns but was rejected, prompting the school to appeal at the Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal.
Strathcona abandoned its claims on two houses during the hearing but won its fight to overturn the covenant on the third property earlier this month. It has not revealed its plans for the house.
The council said during the VCAT hearing that this lack of detail was central to its rejection of the school’s application to lift the covenant.
The covenant was put in place by several home owners in the Claremont Park Estate – a residential enclave with a heritage overlay protecting its Victorian and Edwardian homes – more than 20 years ago.
During the hearing, residents accused the school of degrading neighbourhood character and property values and causing parking and traffic conflict.
Dr Jane Addis, a former Boroondara mayor and councillor, has lived in the estate for about 50 years and said home owners had created the restrictive covenant to protect their homes from “the gradual and unremitting creep of the school into the residential area”.
Her husband John Addis likened the school “to being a parasite on the local neighbourhood of Canterbury, not paying rates to the council and not contributing to the area, yet existing in the area and seeking to expand”.
Jane Addis said the VCAT judgment was disappointing.
“We got our say, but I don’t see the logic, in that I don’t see how you can say that we will not suffer a loss or that the neighbourhood will not suffer a loss,” she said.
Addis said people had bought into the area at great expense in the belief that the restrictive covenant would protect the estate, but they now feared the decision had set a precedent that would allow the school to “eat away at it … they’ll just pick them off one by one”.
David Giddings, who spoke at the hearing on behalf of the Canterbury Community Action Group, said the school’s expansion into other properties had given the area a more institutional feel.
Strathcona Girls Grammar in Canterbury.Credit: Chris Hopkins
“The action group is concerned that the creep of the school into that Claremont Park estate, which is a historic estate, will keep going, and that the historic nature of the estate will eventually be diluted,” Giddings said.
Canterbury home owner Dr Geetha Gopalsamy told the hearing she feared removing the covenant on one property would weaken its strength on the remaining properties it covers. She said increasing traffic would erode amenity. Her car was hit and damaged by a school bus while parked outside their house, she said.
Home owner Christopher Banks said the school seemed “hell-bent on taking over the place”.
“We don’t begrudge the fact the school is there, but we don’t want the school to take over, it just needs to stay where it is,” he said.
The school’s enrolments have expanded from 700 to almost 800 students in the past decade. Banks said parents sometimes parked across his driveway while dropping off their children, and they were rude when he asked them to move.
The dispute is the latest in a number of recent conflicts between independent schools and residents in Melbourne’s south-eastern suburbs.
In April, Stonnington City Council imposed new parking restrictions outside Caulfield Grammar to alleviate congestion at pick-up and drop-off times. In June, Bayside City Council lost its VCAT appeal against Haileybury College’s plan to demolish a number of homes in a heritage estate in Hampton so it could expand its Brighton campus.
Tribunal member Susan Whitney said in ruling in the school’s favour that she did not accept residents’ arguments that lifting the covenant on one property would erode heritage or degrade home values in the estate.
Strathcona was contacted for comment but had not responded by deadline.
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