Save Dully Residents'
Action Group
December 2024 update
​​​
As Save Dully members may recall, Inner West Council had been given a 31 December deadline (by the NSW Government) to come up with new and more locally-responsive controls for new apartment development in the area around Dulwich Hill station.
​
The NSW Government had said that, if the Council didn’t do this work, it would on 31 December rezone all areas in a strict 400m radius around the station for six to eight storey development.
This is known as the Transport Oriented Development (TOD) reform.
However, council staff presented a report to Tuesday night’s Council meeting (Item 1), which said they had been unable to complete their planning work by the deadline, in part because of the complexities of ensuring feasible development outcomes and considering issues such as heritage.
As well, the staff said they were actually working on planning control updates which would affect the entire council area, which meant they needed to consider other issues, including unresolved NSW Government planning policies encouraging apartment buildings and dual occupancies within 800m of town centres. These are known as the Low and Mid-Rise reforms (an announcement on these is expected on Friday 13 December).
​
Councillors voted to request the deferral of the Low and Mid-Rise and TOD reforms, while the council prepares new council-wide planning controls which will be presented to Council at its April 2025 meeting (and then exhibited).
The council inaction however raises the possibility that, on 31 December (Happy New Year!) the government will rezone all land in a 400m circle around Dulwich Hill station (see potential outline below).​​​
This move could be very bad - including splitting housing blocks into two types of densities, placing low-rise owners hard against high-rise developments and destroying heritage areas such as Canonbury Grove and Challis Avenue. It is without question the worst form of planning.
​
The photo below is an example of the way that low-density landowners could be isolated through an arbitrary zoning line (if anything the actual development in the TODs will be larger than this example).
Once areas are rezoned, and development applications are lodged, it is very difficult to change or remove these zonings.
At the meeting, Inner West mayor Darcy Byrne said residents should not worry about the 31 December TOD controls coming into place, as council research had shown the government’s TOD controls were not feasible.
We do not agree with this - a developer lobby group stated that TOD development is feasible in the Inner West. It's just that it's feasible on typical or larger blocks, not smaller blocks.
Mayor Byrne's comments also don't gel with the fact that many residents have been receiving letters from real estate agents and property developers, wanting to buy their land for development purposes.
The council is also saying that it is considering taller buildings in our area, to deal with feasibility issues.
We understand that Summer Hill MP Jo Haylen supports our request for a deferral.
We would urge members to write to the Minister for Planning to support a deferral of the 31 December TOD controls.
Additionally, please write to Jo Haylen at summerhill@parliament.nsw.gov.au.
​
Here are some dot points which could be used.