HOUSING in the Macedon Ranges is starting to cause a stir in parliament thanks to State Member for Northern Victoria Wendy Lovell.
Lovell believes the Minister for Planning is avoiding responsibility for resolving Lancefield’s planning statement.
Blaming the Development Planning Overlay 24 (DPO24) which was put into play in the small town so there could be an increase in diversity within the housing setup, Ms Lovell explained that the small town is getting ignored by the government.
“Rural town planning is in total chaos under Labor as big developers get special fast-track treatment while local councils and landholders are ignored by the Minister.”
“DPO24 is preventing houses from being built in areas of Lancefield that are already zoned residential and within the town’s settlement boundary. The planning minister must use her powers to remove the overlay, instead of passing the buck to Council and forcing them to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars preparing new planning scheme amendments.”
The Review contacted the Minister for Planning, Sonya Kilkenny’s office, where a government spokesperson made comment:
“We are working to unlock more homes for regional Victorians while ensuring communities grow in a planned and coordinated way,” they said.
“Council is the responsible authority to introduce planning controls in this area and we have offered to assist them in this work.”
But Ms Lovell was on the front foot, also claiming that council had written three letters to the Minister for Planning seeking assistance to remove the Lancefield overlay, but in the three years since the first letter, there has been no action taken to resolve the issue.
The department ended up responding to the letters last week, which refused the minister’s intervention and pushed the job over to the local government authority.
But Ms Lovell thinks that the opposition government has a bad track record when it comes to lengthy wait times for planning scheme changes and referred back to the Romsey and Gisborne schemes, which have not been approved for two years.