Council is seeking community feedback on a plan to align housing development controls across the Central Coast.
Currently two different sets of planning controls apply to dwellings across the two former Local Government Areas.
Under the NSW Department of Planning and Environment issued Guidance for merged Councils on planning functions, amalgamated Councils must look for differences and inconsistencies in these controls and also look for opportunities to harmonise them.
Council administrator, Mr Ian Reynolds, said the community was looking for consistency in planning rules across the Coast and this plan would deliver that for housing.
“This Plan will harmonise planning controls for single dwellings across the Coast only, not for multi-unit developments,” Mr Reynolds said.
“More consistent housing development controls will help reduce development application turn-around times, align terminology, reduce and simplify the information needed, basically cut red tape and make it really clear what residents can and cannot build on their property.
“We want to align the controls so the same rules apply for homeowners across the Coast.”
The Draft Housing Development Control Plan will shortly go out on exhibition and residents are encouraged to review the proposed changes and have their say via Council’s Your Voice Our Coast website.
At the March ordinary council meeting, administrator, Mr Ian Reynolds, resolved to endorse the exhibition of the draft amended chapter 2.1 of Development Control Plan 2013 for the Wyong Shire and Chapter 3.1 of the Gosford 2013 DCP.
The public exhibition will be for a period of 28 days.
Under the provisions of the Environmental Planning and Assessment Act, Council is not permitted to have two separate development control plans applying to the same land.
Until such a time as a single consolidated DCP is adopted by Central Coast Council, the DCPs of the former councils will need to be retained.
“This means that if the proposal proceeds, the WDCP 2013 and GDCP 2013 will still both have a housing chapter, however the controls in each housing chapter will be aligned.
According to a report to the administrator, the proposed alignment of the two DCPs involves changes to the site coverage, rear, front and side setbacks, building heights and car parking.
A site coverage control is not currently used under the existing GDCP but other controls, such as floor space ratio and landscape area, have been relied on to achieve the desired outcome.
The WDCP, on the other hand, required a maximum of 60 per cent site coverage on lots with an area less than 250 square metres and 65 per cent on lots with areas greater than 250 square metres.
The proposed DCP would require a maximum of 60 per cent on lots less than 450 square metres, 50 per cent on lots of between 450 and 900 square metres, and 40 per cent on lot sizes of 900 to 1,500 square metres.
In terms of front setbacks, the GDCP required six metres, Wyong required 4.5 metres and the proposed alignment would be for 4.5 metres or “as per adjacent dwellings”.
Rear setbacks in the GDCP will change from three metres to six metres for up to 4.5 metre height, and 3 metres for more than 4.5 metres height.
The GDCP rear setbacks for outbuildings have been three metres, or 900mm if the building height is less than four metres and the building floor area is less than 20 square metres.
The draft proposal would change this to 0.5 metres plus one quarter of the height of the building above 3.8 metres for buildings from 0.5 metres, which is an adoption of the existing Wyong provision.
Under the former Gosford DCP, outbuilding areas were limited to 60 square metres which will be changed to a sliding scale similar to that of the existing Wyong DCP.
Outbuildings on land less than 600 square metres can be 45 square metres in size.
If the block is between 600 and 700 square metres, the outbuilding can be 60 square metres.
Under the proposed aligned DCP provisions, blocks of land between 700 and 800 square metres can have outbuildings up to 75 square metres; blocks 800 to 900 square metres in size can have out buildings up to 85 square metres, and lots above 900 square metres could have outbuildings up to 100 square metres in size.
The building height for outbuildings and detached ancillary development in the former Gosford LGA will be reduced under the proposed alignment of the DCPs from five metres to 4.8 (as per the former WDCP).
The GDCP required two car parking spaces for residential developments with a floor area of 125 square metres or more.
The aligned version will require two car spaces per three bedrooms, in line with the former WDCP requirement.
Some of the elements that cannot be aligned and will remain as per the existing GDCP are house building height which will stay at 8.5 metres (generally) in residential areas (as opposed to 10 metres under the WDCP); floor space ratio which will stay at 0.5 to 1, and foreshore building lines which will remain six metres for single storey dwellings and 10 metres for two-storey houses.
Source:
Media release, Mar 22
Ian Reynolds, Central Coast Council
Agenda item 2.4 Housing DCP review, Mar 22,
Central Coast Council ordinary meeting