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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2002 Week 2 Hansard (20 February) . . Page.. 380 ..

MS TUCKER (continuing):

At present, a lessee who holds an approval to undertake a development may apply to amend it. If PALM is satisfied that it is a minor amendment, then the approval can be amended without notifying any third party, such as neighbours or people who previously objected to the development. There are also no rights of appeal against such amendments.

This process is much simpler than the normal development approval process, because minor amendments are thought not to warrant as much attention as a new development application. Unfortunately, the lack of transparency in this process means that it could be abused if amendments are approved as minor amendments, but do, in fact, have major impacts on the surrounding neighbourhood.

This issue was brought to my attention a couple of years ago in relation to a redevelopment in Yarralumla, where an application to build a very large house, which took up nearly the whole block, had generated many objections from surrounding residents, because of the overshadowing it would cause.

Without notifying the residents, the landowner applied for a minor amendment to increase the height of the building by about 600 millimetres. PALM approved this, again, without notifying the residents. The next door neighbour only found out about this amendment by chance, after construction work had begun. The 600-millimetre increase in height may sound minor but, for the next-door neighbour, it meant losing all the sunlight in his backyard on mid-winter afternoons. It certainly had a major impact on him, and PALM had taken no account of this.

Since that time, I have heard other stories of minor amendments to residential redevelopments, in particular, where neighbours have been concerned that the minor amendment did not seem to them to be minor, but they had no chance to do anything about it. In fact, in 2001, some 20 per cent of development applications included minor amendments.

I put up a private members bill in the last Assembly, which included an amendment to this provision, but it was lost in the debate over other amendments to the land act that were included in that bill. I am therefore putting up this separate bill today to give this issue more prominence.

My bill maintains the concept of minor amendments, as I recognise that there is a need for a simple means to approved changes to plans that have no impact on the overall form of the building. However, my bill provides that PALM must give notice of an approval of a minor amendment to each person who has demonstrated an interest in the development by objecting to the original approval of the development application. I hope that the public exposure that such minor amendments will receive as a result of this bill will put sufficient pressure on PALM to make responsible decisions about applications for minor amendments.

I have also tightened up the criteria used to assess whether minor amendments can be granted by requiring that the amendment not cause any increase in detriment to any person or the environment.

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