Red Head Villages Association meet with Department of Planning

Today's meeting of the Department of Planning, The Red Head Villages Association, Councillors and Council staff I believe was a first and in my opinion was an integral part of breaking down communication barriers that exist.

Regional director Brett Whitworth travelled to the seaside village of Manyana to address the concerns raised by the association in regards to Caravan park/ Manufactured home parks development and the departments approach to the sensitive urban lands review in the upcoming Local Environment Plan changes.

The local environment plan review has been underway for at least 3 years and is premised on an administrative change over that sees current zones swapped over to new zones that are as similar as is possible within the context of reducing zone types from +50 down to +20.

Shoalhavens reputation as a developer friendly spot rezoning city has many people suspicious of the zoning changes. The community consultative groups from across the city have gathered together and created a Local Environment Review Group to try and start making sense of the draft before it gets on exhibition-problem is that the draft comes without the relevant maps which will not be available until the exhibition period starts proper.

So as a community we are nervous about the expansion of manufactured home estates throughout the region as it is the last thing we need to compound some of the problems we face with aging and missing infrastructure and the lack of sustainability that this type of so called 'affordable housing' supports.

The Department of Plannings representative did not give us the unequivocal answers that we wanted but there was a great sign of relief to know that the relevant state environment planning policy's (21 and 36) relating to caravan parks and manufactured homes have been tagged for priority review. Brett Whitworth indicated that he favoured a site compatibility certificate which would help weed out the really speculative proposals.

The Red Head Villages Association executive are a well prepared group of people, who have spent an extraordinary amount of time getting to know and understand the local environment planned changes. I think they understand it more than some of the Councillors do. They have weighed up the implications and asked the serious questions-it is a rare day that the bureaucracy's meets with the people to at least understand their perspective. For me it was a pleasure and honour to facilitate the meeting and represent the people of my ward in a forum that is surely a first.