By Colin MacGillivray
Mitchell Shire councillors last week delivered a withering assessment of a Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal, VCAT, decision to grant a permit for an 18-dwelling subdivision on Kilmore’s Tootle Street, labelling the decision ‘sickening’.
Council refused a planning permit application for the development at 45-47 Tootle Street in February on the grounds that it represented overdevelopment and was ‘not congruent with the other buildings around it’ in the words of Cr Nathan Clark.
The developer challenged council’s decision at VCAT in June, with tribunal member Kerrie Birtwistle last month overturning the council verdict and granting a permit.
Ms Birtwistle found the proposal was an orderly planning outcome because the site had appropriate access to public transport, provided an acceptable response to the established neighbourhood character and there was no specific policy preventing infill development at the site.
Cr Clark was dismayed at Ms Birtwistle’s decision and said it would result in a development that was badly out of keeping with the surrounding neighbourhood.
“In the absence of policy, we have best practice; in the absence of best practice, we have common sense; and in the absence of common sense, we have terrible decisions like this,” he said.
“Infill development is commonly misunderstood to be gentrification … and this is not that – this is densification. Densification is a necessity in metropolitan Melbourne to address our record levels of population growth, not in the peri-urban towns and rural areas around Melbourne.
“The two blocks currently have … similar density to the neighbouring properties of what is traditionally a low-density residential [area]. The density of housing that’s … been granted here sees that density increase by 900 per cent.”
Cr Clark said the development flew in the face of the State Government’s desire to create ’20-minute neighbourhoods’ across Victoria.
“The experts at the Victorian Planning Authority tell us to improve liveability we need to create 20-minute neighbourhoods. The … concept is all giving people the ability to meet most of their daily needs within a 20-minute return walk from home.
“According to Google Maps, the … return walk from home is 128 minutes for a resident who lives in this development. If they want to walk up to Woolies and back to grab some milk, they’re looking at a two-hour return trip.”
Cr Fiona Stevens encouraged the community to read council’s report on the outcome in the agenda for the August council meeting.
“We as members of the community hear from our community many times about their dissatisfaction with a number of planning outcomes,” she said.
Cr Stevens said it would be good for the community to understand that the council didn’t always agree with the VCAT outcomes.
“We fight the fight where we can to the best of our ability,’ she said.
“We believe we take strong arguments to VCAT and our staff represent us well, but when you get decisions like [this] you just shake your head and wonder why we bother.
“[It] is just so disappointing that it’s sickening.”
People can read Ms Birtwistle’s decision by visiting www.austlii.edu.au/cgi-bin/viewdoc/au/cases/vic/VCAT/2022/797.html.
Partly because of the VCAT decision, Cr Louise Bannister called for council officers to complete studies of the neighbourhood characters of Kilmore, Broadford and Seymour.
In a notice of motion at the meeting, Cr Bannister called for the studies to be completed by December 2023.
“We find ourselves having to defend our decisions on developments we believe are not appropriate for areas within our townships, one of which was spoken of tonight,” she said.
“This is [about] getting them behind us as evidence and as a backup so when we are taken to VCAT for refusing developments that do not match our neighbourhood character, we can bring to them this evidence that shows very clearly why they don’t.
“It is an important set of data, because we’re going to get more and more developments come to us and we need to have that evidence to support our decisions going forward.”
Cr Stevens said neighbourhood character studies should have been completed years ago.
“The neighbourhood character study has not been done, and it needs to be done to complement and tidy up the references made to neighbourhood character in [town] structure plans,” she said.
“It was clearly identified when these structure plans were being done that this piece of work needed to be done, and it hasn’t been done. It’s time we got it done.
“It’s very concerning that in the notes on this document … it says it’s going to take a significant budget allocation and is likely to take several years to prepare and implement into the Mitchell Planning Scheme, which is another document that comes into play.”
The Review offered VCAT officials an opportunity to respond to the councillors’ comments, but a spokesperson said they were unable to comment on individual cases.