By KATH GANNAWAY
Residents push to force council’s hand over smelly chicken farm…
A YELLINGBO poultry farm that has increased from 36,500 birds to 101,000 is causing a stink that neighbours say is outside the rules.
Neighbour John Clark wrote to Yarra Ranges Council saying a change of use since Kevin Crean bought the farm a year ago has resulted in increased odour and noise which is making life unbearable for him and his wife, Sue, and other nearby residents.
Mr Crean, however, says he has an existing right and claims he was given the go-ahead by Yarra Ranges Council planners when he first looked at buying the farm.
The farm was traditionally run as an egg farm but is now used as a free-range chicken farm supplying eating chickens to Inghams.
The options open to Mr Crean according to Yarra Ranges Council are for him to go to VCAT to seek a declaration establishing existing use rights or, alternately, apply for a planning permit for the use of the site.
Mr Crean has told the Mail he will do neither and the Clarks are now pushing Yarra Ranges Council to force the issue.
“It was always running as a fertile egg farm which quite a low-key type of farm, now he’s turned it into a broiler farm with lots of issues about smell and noise from midnight through to 3am, sometimes longer, every five weeks and seven weeks,” Mrs Clark said.
“He has completely changed the use, for which he has no permit, and for some reason the council is reluctant to act,” she said.
“Council asked VCAT and they said he must be able to prove existing rights before he can continue operating, but that seven or eight months ago.
“Eventually we got a letter to say they couldn’t make up their minds whether he had existing rights, and he has been directed by council but is just ignoring them.”
Mr Crean said the issues is not about the change of use, or the numbers.
“It has been used as a poultry farm of various sorts over the past 47 years and council advised us unitially that it didn’t need a permit.
Mr Crean claims he approached the council about the change of use from a fertile egg farm to a freerange chicken operation and was given written and verbal assurances that he didn’t need a permit.
“They, basically, said ‘go ahead’; I said I was going to be spending a lot of money and even asked them to look at it, which they declined to do… and here we are.”
Yarra Ranges Council declined to answer questions on whether Mr Crean had, in fact, been given assurances – either verbally, or in writing, saying only that for the benefit of the community it would like to see the issue resolved at VCAT.
In response to the Clarks’ letter at the council meeting on 22 October, Director of Planning Andrew Paxton said the council was currently seeking legal advice on whether further compliance action would be taken.
He said the EPA had conducted an inspection and the council was waiting for the outcome.
