OVERDEVELOPMENT – COMING TO YOU SOON!

Residents Planning Forum

OVERDEVELOPMENT:   How can you protect yourself

Date:            Thursday, 15 March, 2012

Time:           7.30 p.m.

 Venue:         Bentleigh Club, Yawla St., Bentleigh

 Speakers*:    Cr. Serge Thomann  – Port Phillip Council

  Cr. Rosemary West, OAM  – Kingston Council

      Admission Fee

            Members:                        No charge

            Non-Members:               Small Gold Coin Donation     

Glen Eira Council has a bad Planning Scheme. It fails to control over-development. Other Council’s have stringent, hard-hitting controls, so why not Glen Eira? Instead, our Scheme goes easy on developers’ allowing them to build almost whatever they like and then, if Council makes a decision the developer disagrees with, it is easy for the developer  to appeal to VCAT to overrule Council’s decision.

The Council Plan  DOES NOT have:

• Prescribed (ie fixed) Building Height Limits – anywhere
• Structure Plans (ie. Detailed plans to control development).
• Car Parking Plans (to stop our streets clogging up with even more parked cars).
• Has no clearly defined “Transition” or Buffer zones to protect peopleliving near intense development areas.
• Full Development Levies to pay for new parkland or amenities.

Worse still,  in Glen Eira huge developments are often approved with:

• Heavily Reduced car parking requirements
• Goods loading bays not demanded for commercial properties
• Inadequate on-site car parking, forcing cars to park in our already clogged streets.
• Traffic impacts are mostly disregarded, often spuriously declared to be “unlikely to have any significant negative impacts”.  Flow-on impact in local streets is not analysed. 
• Then there is
  • Overlooking
  • Overshadowing and loss of sunlight caused by nearby high-rise buildings – claimed by Council planners to be “not excessive”! 
  • Trees cut down  (‘moonscaping’) of development sites.
  • Badly maintained drains, leading to local flooding.

SO, HOW SAFE ARE YOU? How safe is your street and neighbourhood?  Do you like the changes that are happening all around you?  Do you like the possibility of your street, your suburb, and your lifestyle being lost to more overdevelopment?   

DID YOU KNOW that Glen Eira Planners are planning for even more high rise towers; and more and more people in less and less space.   DO YOU WANT THIS?  Already 20% of Glen Eira has been set aside as ‘Housing Diversity Areas” ( ie. for High Density and High Rise unit development).  Council then pretends other 80% is a “Minimal Change Area”.  This really means “Minimally Protected Area”.

 WHAT CAN YOU DO? COME ALONG TO THE FORUM MEETING

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* Speakers

Serge Thomann – A leading figure in the ‘Unchain St. Kilda Movement’ which was successful in putting a halt to the previous St. Kilda Triangle plans and in the election of councillors with a clear commitment to genuine community consultation and accountability in local government.

Rosemary West, AOM – A leading voice in community affairs and ensuring greater involvement by residents. Concerned about local control of planning issues, in particular the ‘green wedges’ proposals.