By KATH GANNAWAY
YARRA Ranges Council has been told that tenements that restrict building on some blocks in the shire are ‘not easy to discover’.
Kalorama resident Ken Stewart was caught out by the ‘undiscoverability’ of single blocks of land covered by tenement provisions brought in under the 1982 Upper Yarra Valley & Dandenong Ranges Strategy Plan.
Mr Stewart was granted a permit to build on his Logan Avenue block after Yarra Ranges councillors went against the planning department report recommendation that Cr Len Cox said would have rendered the block ‘useless’.
Tenement provisions effectively saw small blocks of land consolidated in order to keep areas of the Yarra Valley and Dandenong Ranges from being over developed.
Mr Stewart said he had lived in the area for more than 40 years and bought the block, one of five blocks under the tenement, 14 years ago.
He told the Yarra Ranges Council meeting on 11 March that he only discovered the tenement provision when he applied for a permit and had spent thousands of dollars in an effort to meet the requirements to build.
The report recommended the permit be refused on the basis that it didn’t meet two of the 10 test conditions, saying it could contribute to incremental erosion of the tenement ability to limit further development and that it was infill development.
“While this may appear to be inequitable to the current owners, there are countless other landowners within this wider area who have had to comply with the control,” the report said.
“Approving this application would be equally unfair.”
In answer to a question from Cr Samantha Dunn on just how difficult it was for prospective buyers to find out whether a block has a tenement attached, planning manager Andrew Paxton replied “in the current plan they are not overt”.
He elaborated by saying they were not easy to discover, prompting Cr Cox’s suggestion “I think planners should, when they have a moment, have a look at this so people know what they have and what they don’t have when they are buying land.”
Cr Callanan, who brought the application to the council table, said he believed it met the provisions including green wedge, bushfire and erosion management overlays and moved an alternative motion to approve the application.
Cr Jim Child said going back to his days in the Shire of Upper Yarra, the tenements were a blessing.
“We are bearing fruit from that now,” he said but added that he didn’t believe that Mr Stewart’s application would set a precedent.
“We have to look at each one on its merits,” he said.
Cr Samantha Dunn opposed it, saying it was unique to Yarra Ranges and came about to protect the Yarra Valley and the Dandenong Ranges.
“I think if it doesn’t meet the provisions, then it should not be approved,” she said, but added that there were issues that needed to be addressed, including making tenements more obvious to people buying property.
