C126 is go

Great news to hear that the Minister for Planning has approved Yarra Ranges Planning Scheme Amendment C126 without changing the wording submitted by council.

The journey to get to this point has been a long one and started back in May 2008 with the development of Vision2020 by Design.

Amendment C126 is an articulation of Vision2020 by Design, a document which provides guidance on desired built form outcomes across the Yarra Ranges.  C126 is a translation of Vision2020 by Design into Planning Scheme controls known as Design and Development Overlays (DDOs).

The newly approved overlays will provide design guidelines for new developments across town centres in Yarra Ranges. They are all about the built form component of new developments. The design guidelines will make it easier for potential applicants and other interested parties to understand Council’s design objectives for the future development of town centre areas.

Amendment C126 received a high level of media interest due to the inclusion of a provision that “Buildings and works that comprise drive through sales facilities are discouraged”, with this provision covering the townships of Belgrave, Kallista, Mt Dandenong, Olinda, Sassafras and Tecoma.

As part of the public exhibition process council received 73 submissions, the majority of those from community members in the Dandenong Ranges concerned about the prospect of more convenience restaurants in the hills. McDonalds also submitted to the public exhibition process, citing concerns with the DDOs around the ‘step down’ approach to building heights, the retention of buildings that contribute to the character of the town centre, the need for verandas to be designed based on established veranda design and lastly the provision to *discourage drive throughs associated with convenience restaurants (*note the final wording of this provision was changed to: buildings and works that comprise drive through sales facilities are discouraged).

It should be noted that the DDO’s give greater weight to built form outcomes and will be useful planning policy into the future, sadly we didn’t have the weight of planning scheme policy when considering the McDonalds application and could only rely on Vision2020 by Design which does not have the same status as a Design and Development Overlay.

I congratulate the Minister for approving the amendment as presented, certainly has made a lot of locals very happy and the new DDOs will be part of the many tools available when assessing built form elements in new developments across Yarra Ranges into the future. 

The next step in affording greater planning protections to the Dandenongs is the development of a Localised Planning Statement, Yarra Ranges is one of 4 councils in Victoria to have this additional policy control granted by the Minister for Planning. I’m currently in discussions with the Minister for Planning to ensure it includes the Dandenongs.

samantha in the press

Driven Away

Mail Newspapers
by Jesse Graham
29 Oct 2013

Seeds plant habitat awareness
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by Rebecca Bills
29 Oct 2013

State kicks in $650,000 for soccer hub
Mail Newspapers
by Rebecca Bills
29 Oct 2013

ddo’s up for minister’s consideration

report from the roundtable – 22 oct

At last night’s council meeting council had to consider Planning Scheme Amendment C126, a set of Design and Development Overlays (DDOs) that introduce a set of design guidelines for new town centre development across the Yarra Ranges. I was pleased to be able to move the motion to endorse the DDOs to proceed to the Minister for Planning for approval.

As part of the public exhibition process council received 72 submissions, the majority of those from community members in the Dandenong Ranges concerned about the prospect of more convenience restaurants in the hills. McDonalds also submitted to the public exhibition process, citing concerns with the DDOs around the ‘step down’ approach to building heights, the retention of buildings that contribute to the character of the town centre, the need for verandas to be designed based on established veranda design and lastly the provision to discourage drive throughs associated with convenience restaurants.

Because there were unresolved issues as part of the public exhibition process council referred the C126 amendment to a Planning Panel. Panel members conducted the hearing over two days and heard from a number of community members as well as landowners of prominent sites in the Shire and McDonalds.

The panel has since presented its report to council and last night was the opportunity for councillors to consider the report, the panel recommendations and what should be in and out of the DDOs.

For me there were a number of key issues I thought important to highlight as part of speaking to the motion.

Drive Throughs

The panel was concerned about council’s inclusion of the guideline “buildings that include drive through sales facilities associated with a convenience restaurant are discouraged”. The panel considered that this guideline was in effect a form of control over the ‘use’ of the land which is in conflict with the underlying zone. Council did not support the panel’s recommendation in relation to this issue, given the guideline is about townships with a strong pedestrian focus, fine grain development form and disruption to retail street frontage and not land use council endorsed an amended guideline “Building and works that comprise drive through sales facilities are discouraged”.

It’s important to note that the DDOs provide a set of guidelines and are not mandatory controls therefore the language in them needs to reflect that. I know a number of community members submitted that the word prohibit should be used rather than discourage but in the context of DDOs this was not possible.

It's also important to note that this particular guideline applies to the townships of Belgrave, Kallista, Mt Dandenong, Olinda, Sassafras and Tecoma.

 

Building Heights

There were a lot of submissions about building heights and the panel suggested that building heights should be expressed  in the DDOs as a number of storeys with no reference to a building height in metres.  Given other Yarra Ranges DDOs express height in metres (Lilydale and Chirnside Park) council considered that we would retain reference to the building height in meters and include an additional statement to give clarity “for the purpose of this schedule ‘building height’ means the vertical distance between the highest point of the building and the natural ground level immediately below that point…”. This guideline discourages building forms on sloping sites that result in acceptable heights on only some boundaries of the site with excessive heights on the other boundaries and is an important consideration in the hills where most sites are sloped.

Environmentally Sustainable Design

The panel did not support council’s desire to include a guideline that requires a management plan showing how proposals will adopt environmentally sustainable design principles on developments of more than 1500 square meters. Council did not agree with the panel recommendation and endorsed the view that there is an imperative to build this expectation across our planning policies and the reality is that there is an increasing expectation and acceptance of the need to consider ESD principles in the assessment of major development proposals.

In speaking to the motion I talked about the role of councillors, that we don’t have to accept or agree with the panel’s recommendations. We are the democratically elected representatives, we understand the aspiration of our community at a much deeper level than the planning panel.

I talked about the development of Vision2020 by Design, the founding document of the DDOs, the enormous body of work and community consultation that had gone into the development of the DDOs and the importance to guide built form throughout Yarra Ranges.

I said the DDOs reflected the aspirations of the community and looked forward to the Minister for Planning, Matthew Guy, supporting council in its aspiration for the Yarra Ranges Community. It is an opportunity for the Minister to support Yarra Ranges in what it’s trying to achieve on behalf of the community.

I’m pleased to report that the majority of councillors supported the motion.

For

Crs Samantha Dunn, Noel Cliff, Len Cox, Terry Avery, Andy Witlox, Maria McCarthy and Jason Callanan.

 

Against

Cr Fiona McAllister

Absent from the chamber due to a Conflict of Interest
Cr Jim Child

samantha in the media

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3MDR Judy Ann and Company
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5 Jun 2013

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design guidelines off to panel

report from the roundtable – 28 may

 

At this week’s meeting councillors had to consider submissions to what we call C126, a Planning Scheme Amendment (PSA) incorporating a set of Design and Development Overlays (DDOs) that provide guidance about the type of built form we’d like to see in our townships. The DDOs are a translation of Vision2020 by Design, ultimately for incorporation into the Yarra Ranges Planning Scheme.

I was pleased to be able to move the motion to request that the Minister for Planning appoint an independent planning panel to consider all the submissions to PSA C126.  Given that there are some issues that cannot be resolved in some submissions the only option available to council is to take the PSA to a panel or abandon the amendment, which certainly wasn’t on the cards.

The DDO’s will give the planning scheme more rigour as they provide a finer grain of detail of what the built form elements of townships should be. The DDOs detail what council’s expectations are in relation to built form and will assist future applicants in understanding Council’s design objectives.

It was interesting to note that of the 72 submissions, 57 of them were in relation to the issue of drive through restaurants in the Dandenong Ranges. In considering the submissions officers have recommended that an addition be made to the design guidelines for  DDO14 (this applies to Olinda, Mt Dandenong, Sassafras and Kallista) and DDO15 (this applies to Belgrave) being:

“Buildings that include drive through sales facilities associated with a convenience restaurant are discouraged”.

Officers have also recommended that Tecoma (originally in DDO13) be included in DDO14 as a response to submissions about the similarity of Tecoma with other villages of the Dandenongs.

I was pleased to support the officer’s recommendations and this will form part of council’s submission to the planning panel. 

The planning panel will also provide submitters with the opportunity to participate in the panel process to reinforce their original submission. I’d certainly encourage all submitters to participate, it is important that the planning panel have a full understanding of the issues raised.

I’m pleased to say that councillors voted unanimously to support the motion.

 

Note: Crs McCarthy and Avery absent, Cr Child left the chamber declaring a conflict of interest due to an interest in properties in Warburton and Yarra Junction located within the exhibited DDOs.

 

you aint seen nothing yet

 

I had the pleasure of speaking at the No Maccas in The Hills community meeting today. It was great to see a couple of hundred people join the meeting, forfeiting their sunny Sunday afternoon to hear more about the campaign.

I spoke about the process of the demolition on the site as well as a couple of important consultations the council is currently undertaking.
 

I explained the demolition was a separate process to the construction and that a demolition permit would be issued by a private building surveyor, as part of that process an ‘asset protection permit’ would need to be issued by council to ensure the protection of council assets, in this case the footpath and drains. I said council would get a copy of the demolition permit and also be advised of when the demolition would take place. For more general info on the demolition process read my recent blog entry here.

I talked first about council’s consultation on our health and wellbeing plan and how important it is to input to this consultation. I have heard so much about the proximity of this development to sensitive uses such as the Primary School and the PreSchool, it’s important that if the community are concerned about this and any potential to link to childhood obesity then they need to input to the online forum and the health and wellbeing consultation is the right place to do it. You can read more about participating here.
 

I then talked about what’s called in planning jargon, C126. C126 is a planning scheme amendment that seeks to include Design and Development Overlays (DDOs) in the planning scheme to guide the built form in townships. Given that built form was such an important element in the objection to McDonalds I expected that the community might include their concerns about drive through restaurants and their impact on pedestrian friendly design and pedestrian friendly townships. I also talked about Hurstbridge and their “township zoning” which means there is greater scrutiny over any application process unlike the Business One zone currently in place in Tecoma and that may be something the community might like to further investigate. You can read more about submitting to the C126 consultation here.

I encouraged meeting goers to participate across the consultation process, it’s very hard to make a case to my councillor colleagues and to other tiers of government without submissions calling for change, submissions and participation from the community gives a far greater credibility to any advocacy or planning scheme changes we might undertake.
 

I finished by saying if anyone asked me if the campaign had reached its full potential I would have no hesitation in telling them you aint seen nothing yet.

new design and development overlays on exhibition now

Yes, sorry for the planning speak, but it's important council gets your views on what's known as Amendment C126, as this is all about the built form of new developments in our townships. I know that built form and township character have been key issues for some very controversial applications in the Lyster Ward so I encourage you to have your say on this consultation. The eventual outcome in this process is for Amendment C126 to be incorporated into the Yarra Ranges Planning Scheme to give more weight to local design priorities.

Where does the amendment apply?

The amendment applies  Design and Development Overlays (DDO’s) to the following town centres:

Belgrave, Belgrave South, Coldstream, Kallista, Kilsyth, Healesville, Monbulk, Montrose, Mt Dandenong, Olinda, Sassafras, Seville, Tecoma, Upwey, Wandin North, Warburton, Woori Yallock, Yarra Glen and  Yarra Junction. 

What will the DDOs do?

The new overlays will provide design guidelines for new developments in these town centres. So they are all about the built form component of new developments. The design guidelines will make it easier for potential applicants and other interested parties to understand Council’s design objectives for the future development of town centre areas.

 The design guidelines will be used in the assessment of planning permit applications and in pre- application discussions with potential planning applicants. The new overlays will not increase the number of matters that currently require planning permits.

What information is available?

The Amendment info includes maps highlighting where the proposed DDOs will apply and a 'schedule' which details the sorts of things that are being considered to be included in the DDO. This includes things such as a character statement describing the town, the design objectives describing what's important to the town, what things are exempt, design requirements which has specific information detailing the town centre character, landscaping, the interface with public places and residential areas, car park design and if applicable design guidelines for key redevelopment sites. 

How can you find out more?

Community members can view the proposed design guidelines and other Amendment C126 documents at the following locations:

~ Council’s Community Links - our closest Monbulk or Upwey
~ Council’s website here

The closing date for submissions is 26 April 2013.

Submissions should be addressed to the Manager, Strategic Planning, PO Box 105 Lilydale 3140 or mail@yarraranges.vic.gov.au, quoting Amendment C126.