Guidelines to help protect towns

By Paul Dunlop
CARDINIA Shire Council has pledged to protect the municipality’s smaller towns from the ‘big house on small block’ trend sweeping through the suburbs.
New planning guidelines have been designed to help Garfield, Bunyip, Kooweerup and Lang Lang retain their character, encouraging larger lot sizes for housing and seeking to maintain a sense of spaciousness.
The township character assessments for the four towns were adopted at the council’s meeting on Monday, 11 December.
Councillors said they would help to ensure future development was not at odds with the existing charms and qualities of the shire’s smaller communities.
Rural town character has been a hotly debated topic in recent times with plenty of discussion in the community since the council embarked on its township character assessment project more than two years ago.
Bunyip Ward councillor Bill Pearson said the guidelines encouraged larger lot sizes and sought to ensure units were not shoeboxed together.
He said the general rule of thumb was a minimum lot size of 700 square metres for a house block and 450 square metres for a unit.
“This has been a hotly debated topic – why do we need to do it?” he said. “A lot of people are coming to work in the Pakenham area and will be looking to live in towns such as Bunyip, Kooweerup and Lang Lang.
“It is vital we properly plan.
“The beauty of our towns is a major attraction, they have been there a long time.
“Make no mistake – Drouin and Warragul are not even in the growth corridor and they are experiencing rapid growth. Hopefully these character assessments will back up our planning process,” Cr Pearson said.
Cr Pearson said houses were being built in Pakenham on blocks of 300 square metres.
While some people in the community would say the guidelines did not go far enough to protect smaller towns from unsightly development, they were a major step in the right direction, he said.
“It is a compromise. It’s not what everyone wanted, but it is important the looseness and openness that’s in our towns to a degree be retained,” he said.
Western Port Ward councillor Doug Hamilton said the township character assessment was the result of a process that began in 2004.
“It’s been a long and fairly torturous process,” he said.
Cr Hamilton said the end result was a “base which talks about what people in our towns believe their future is”.
“I’m very pleased with the outcome. We’ve now got something to hang our hat on,” Cr Hamilton said.
Emerald Ward councillor Graeme Legge paid tribute to the efforts of planning manager Phil Walton and his staff, Cr Hamilton and former Bunyip Ward councillor Helen Ward, who he said had put a lot of time and effort into the process.