Submissions

Place of Worship, Browns Rd, Devon Meadows - Submission

The proposed Place of Worship and car parking at 73 Browns Rd, Devon Meadows is contrary to the purposes of the Green Wedge Zone A (GWZA) which are:

  • To implement the Municipal Planning Strategy and the Planning Policy Framework.
  • To provide for the use of land for agriculture.
  • To protect, conserve and enhance the biodiversity, natural resources, scenic landscapes and heritage values of the area.
  • To ensure that use and development promotes sustainable land management practices and infrastructure provision.
  • To protect, conserve and enhance the cultural heritage significance and the character of rural and scenic non-urban landscapes.
  • To recognise and protect the amenity of existing rural living areas
Tuesday, 3 December, 2019

Objection to Retrospective Place of Worship Application, Devon Meadows

I am writing with an urgent plea. Please do not approve this urban use application. Each one that is approved provides incentive and precedent for another, and I think this is the first in the Western Port Green Wedge. But if it gets through, this highly vulnerable area will be subjected to the same assault of urban use applications that we are now seeing in Narre Warren North and Narre Warren East.

Saturday, 30 November, 2019

Proposed Place of Worship and Car Parking - Objection

The subject site, 73 Browns Rd Devon Meadows, is located on Green Wedge A Zone (GWAZ) land in a rural area, surrounded by farms.

The Green Wedges Coalition has frequently opposed applications for schools and places of worship in the Green Wedges on the basis that schools should be where the students live and religious edifices should be where the parishioners live. These are fundamentally urban uses, and it is poor planning to allow them in the rural fringe areas where they increase car usage, generate heavy traffic flows on green wedge roads and impact adversely on the amenity of those who choose to live in the countryside.

Even though Place of worship is a Section 2 use (Permit Required), this does not make it “as of right”. There is plenty of scope to refuse an application if it doesn’t satisfy the long list of policy objectives, strategies, guidelines or zone requirements for the area.

Thursday, 17 October, 2019

Objection to the rezoning of Green Wedge land to Commerial

Yarra Ranges amendment C186 proposes to re-zone 361-365 Mt Dandenong Tourist Rd (three lots) from Green Wedge A zone to Commercial 1 zone due to a request from the land owner for a  commercial zoning to facilitate additional commercial uses.

The UYDRA regional planning authority investigated the region in 1981 and again in 1992 producing a multitude of technical reports including those on the landscape living and commercial areas of the Dandenong Ranges. The former Shire of Sherbrooke exhibited and adopted a planning scheme in a the late 80’s and the now Shire of Yarra Ranges has also exhibited and adopted a planning scheme that includes these sites.

Sunday, 8 September, 2019

Submission to the State Government Discussion Paper: Reforming the Victoria Planning Provisions

The future of the Green Wedges is vital to the quality of life and the reputation of Melbourne as one of the world’s most liveable cities.

Yet the Green Wedges are in danger of disappearing from both the ongoing encroachment of urban development and more insidiously a gradual increase in built development under uses permissible under existing non-urban zones.  These uses and these threats will be exacerbated by the line-by-line program of deregulation advanced in this discussion paper, which could lead to ‘death by a thousand cuts’ for the Green Wedges. .

Wednesday, 31 January, 2018

Yarra Ranges Shire proposed planning scheme amendment C148

The Green Wedge Coalition sees one of the major threats to the future of the Green Wedges as being a ‘death by a thousand cuts’. This refers to increasing evidence of planning applications that seek to enable uses that tip the balance from an open rural landscape to an urban built environment.

Each individual planning application may seem relatively innocuous but the cumulative impact of many similar planning decisions over time will see the loss of the Green Wedges.

Thursday, 1 December, 2016

City of Greater Dandenong C143 Implementation of the Greater Dandenong Green Wedge Management Plan

In late October Planning Panels Victoria held a planning hearing to address the proposed Greater Dandenong Planning Scheme Amendment C143: South East Green Wedge Management Plan 2014.

Wednesday, 2 November, 2016

Plan Melbourne Discussion Paper (2015)

The future of the Green Wedges is vital to the quality of life andthe reputation of Melbourne asone of the world’s most liveable cities.

Yet the Green Wedges are in danger of disappearing from both the ongoing encroachment ofurban development and more insidiously a gradual increase in built development under uses permissible under existing nonurban zoning. These could lead to ‘death by a thousand cuts’.

Saturday, 12 September, 2015

Submission to the planning zones review

1. Background: Green Wedges and the role of the Green Wedges Coalition

 

 The 1968-71 metropolitan planning process officially established nine Green Wedges as non-urban zones between Melbourne's main urban development corridors. It outlined acceptable non-urban uses, including recreation, flora and fauna conservation. landscape protection, resource utilization and farming. The protection of public land and of public open space is integral to the first two of these uses, but not necessarily to the others.

 

Saturday, 29 September, 2012