Page 1369 - Week 04 - Wednesday, 28 March 2012
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notification and without their plans being assessed by ACTPLA. Development applications in the code track are currently not required to be publicly notified. The bill ensures that applications for single-dwelling houses in existing suburbs will need minor public notification under section 153, which is a public notice to adjoining premises.
As members may know, I am a frequent attendee at community council meetings. This is a live issue for both north Canberra and inner south community councils. These are existing areas where what is happening is that people are finding that the house next door to them is being demolished; a new house is being built; and the new house is a lot bigger and in many cases is damaging trees on their property and in many cases is overshadowing either their building or parts of their garden which they regard as important. In many cases they have said that what has been built is not suitable for RZ1 but in fact meets the requirement for RZ3. This has no public notification, so residents next door cannot scrutinise. Basically they have to wait and see what is being built; then it is too late to object.
In good cases, where we have things working well from the neighbourhood point of view, the proponent, the person who is going to knock their house down and rebuild, will actually go and see the neighbours and discuss this, but often this does not happen. We have the crazy situation where a few things still are not code exempt and get notified and we have comments that other things are not notified. For instance, over the road from me there was a knockdown and rebuild. There was no notification or consultation about the actual house, but they put their carport a bit forward of the building line, so we had notification and the opportunity to comment about the carport. With the house, which was clearly a much bigger thing, there were no options.
We also know from experience with public notification and consultation, and when things end up going to ACAT, that sometimes ACTPLA does not have a lot of time to look at these sorts of plans, and sometimes things get through which are not compliant. If neighbours are notified, we have another set of eyes to see whether the plans are in fact compliant.
That brings me to my last major point—to make plans for single-dwelling proposals available to the public for inspection. Right now I have heard of a number of people who have had to put in FOI requests to find out the plans for what is being built next to them. It could be felt that people should have some privacy for what is inside their house. I do not really have a problem with what is inside their house. The problem is that this means that next-door neighbours cannot see what is going to be built next to them, so they cannot know whether something is going to overshadow them, whether it is compliant with the rules or whether it is going to lead to the death of their trees. It is really crazy that people have to put in FOI requests for things like this. This sort of information should be routinely available. It used to be routinely available and it does not appear to be anymore. People should be able to know in advance what is going to be built next to them.
Amendments made last year to the Building Act 2004 by the Planning and Building Legislation Amendment Bill 2011 (No 2), otherwise known as PABLAB 2, do make a small improvement. They require a sign to be erected at such building sites that
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