The state government’s response to the national housing crisis has activated the approval process that sidelines Council and the community on two proposed developments in Noosa under the new State Facilitated Development (SFD) pathway.
The State has notified council of its intention regarding
• 40 dwelling units at 89 Poinciana Ave and 10 Sidoni St, Tewantin and
• 195 residential units, commercial and retail on 2, 6, 8, 10 and 12 Lanyana Way and 28 Sunshine Beach Road, Noosa Heads.
The available information does not include plans or details of building height. Each development must contain an element of ‘affordable’ housing, not only do we not know what that is at present, ‘affordable’ may not survive the first purchase.
We need more detail to give any feedback as well as to understand conflicts with the planning scheme and impacts on the surrounding community.
PBCA’s submission to the state government is below and Council will make a submission about the proposals before the closing date of 23 September 2024, after which the Housing Minister makes a decision.
PBCAI Submission : State Facilitated Development pathway a denial of our community’s rights
The state government’s response to the national housing crisis has activated the approval process that sidelines Council on two proposed developments in Noosa under the new State Facilitated Development (SFD) pathway. (Units fast tracked NT 6 September 2024)
Peregian Beach Community Association is a strong supporter of Noosa Council’s Noosa Plan which has been approved by the State after community consultation over almost 40 years. As the Queensland Court of Appeal has stated “The terms of a planning scheme inevitably reflect the striking of an overall balance, in the public interest, between the many interests potentially affected by the planning scheme.”
In particular, we support the Plan’s restriction on building heights to below the tree line of 8 metres.
Without information having been provided to enable it to be assessed, it’s likely that this application is non-compliant with the Noosa Plan and would either be delayed until it complied or would be rejected by Noosa Council, which is why the developer is attempting to proceed as a SFD application.
Hence, it is near impossible to forecast what a complying development might look like as the community has not been given any information on the number of rooms per dwelling, what the type/ size of retail/ office premises are, whether there is share car facilities proposed and so on.
It seems that a developer can put in any application and have no regard to our planning scheme, so long as 15 per cent of the development is ‘affordable’ – and ‘affordable’ may not survive the first purchase.
So that a proper community assessment can be made of this development application we are seeking details of site and urban context analysis, preliminary architectural drawings showing the proposed height, setbacks, property boundaries and access. In addition we are seeking preliminary information about any relevant external amenity impacts (for example, shadow diagrams, noise mitigation strategies, etc) together with information on the proposed use, hours of operation, number of staff, car parking provision, etc
195 residential units, combined with undefined amount of commercial and retail land uses at ground level will require a considerable amount of on-site parking which, at this stage not identified and cannot be assessed. Likewise the adequacy or otherwise of the communal areas and amenities referred to are not able to be assessed.
These units, if approved, will have a considerable ongoing impact on the area which will not be limited to the 5,047m2 site area.
The SFD pathway is a denial of the community’s rights under the Planning Act 2016. Based on the standard development application requirements this application should be assessed as non-compliant and refused.
Barry Cotterell
President Peregian Beach Community Association
