SHIRE president Steve Harrison accuses Rod Whittle and Leeuwin Environment of scare-mongering and ‘biased misrepresentation’ over the group’s stance on the lack of environmental protection in the adopted Local Planning Scheme, and the improper process used to prepare the Scheme.
Well, here’s a nutshell of what happened from a non-member of LE.
See what you think.
Council inherited a Scheme in early 2005 that had been advertised in accordance with the Act, had been the subject of some 800 plus submissions by the community, and had had those submissions fully assessed by shire planning staff and a respected planning consultant.
Despite this advanced stage of progress it took the council almost a year to meet to consider the scheme in February 2006.
Delays in progressing the Scheme were explained by Cr Harrison as being a result of submissions still being considered by staff.
Documentary evidence that this was untrue was provided to both the Minister and WAPC, and precipitated the February 2006 meeting.
At that meeting the council made some 80 changes to the Scheme beyond those suggested by the staff as a result of submissions.
These 80 changes included changes conflicting with State Government policy (particularly in respect of rural land use), advantageous zoning changes for individual landowners, and massive expansion of the Margaret River townsite based on inflated population growth forecasts.
Some of the changes made to favour individual landowners were based on submissions that had been accepted up to 10 months past the official close of submissions.
There was no public notice that late submissions would be accepted.
In mid-2006 the WA Planning Commission advised the shire that their changes were “ambiguous, contradictory and inappropriate”.
The sprawl of Margaret River townsite was described as “unwarranted and ad-hoc”.
Following this, further changes were made to the Scheme without any public process and with no reference to the submissions, resulting in a substantially different document to the one originally advertised in 2004.
Subsequent modifications required by the WAPC essentially sought to undo many of the 80 inappropriate motions enacted by Council, and also some of the secretly made changes.
Shire staff dutifully amended the Scheme (though some of the changes appear not to adhere to the Ministerial direction) and Council met in September 2008 to formally put the Scheme out for advertisement.
The Special Control Areas and a series of other environmental protection measures in the original draft had been removed (and not reinstated by the WAPC).
So, in the four years since the original advertisement of the Scheme a series of changes, in addition to the 80 publicly made modifications, have been made that were not based on submissions received from the community.
The removal of environmental protections in the Scheme is chief amongst these.
There is no public process that explains or justifies these changes, many of which were not subject to WAPC modification and are retained in the adopted Scheme.
At its recent meeting the Council summarily dismissed over 200 submissions requesting the return of the protection clauses.
Why?
The Local Planning Scheme is the shire’s key statutory planning document.
If you believe the shire’s environment and rural character should be properly protected by the Scheme write to Planning Minister John Day at Minister.Day@dpc.wa.gov.au
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