Fairer Future campaign | dulwich-hill

Both carparks under threat and affordable housing slashed as part of staff response to community feedback

Inner West Council staff have released their response to submissions on the Council’s Fairer Future plan, and - as far as Dulwich Hill is concerned - it’s not great reading.

Many of the requests made by Save Dully, and the Dulwich Hill community, have not been supported. Residents have one final chance to make their case by making a verbal submission at a public forum being held in the evening of Monday, 22 September.

Find out more about the Council's Fairer Future plan here

Here’s a snapshot of the key issues, while noting that it’s difficult to analyse 368 pages of new material in a very short timeframe and there are likely to be many things of personal interest to Save Dully subscribers missed in the analysis below.

Affordable housing

Incredibly, and somewhat embarrassingly for the council, it’s being asked to water down its exhibited targets for the percentage of new housing in development which must be affordable. This comes after a feasibility analysis.

The exhibited plan proposed a 2% affordable housing rate on commencement, rising to 5% after five years. It’s now proposed that the 2% rate only increases to 3% over four years.

This raises the concern that the Fairer Future plan will simply accelerate the loss of existing affordable housing pockets that Dulwich Hill currently has, and not replace this with affordable housing. The package also does not come with any overall affordable housing plan.

Carparks

The genie is finally out of the bottle on Dulwich Hill’s carparks.

After years of secrecy, it's been confirmed that both our carparks - Loftus St and Seaview St - are in the firing line to be developed by the council’s property section. Dulwich Hill is the only Inner West centre which could face losing all its carparks, at the same time.

There’s no guarantee public car parking will be retained. In fact, a report on the Seaview St carpark says that the retention of public carparking can only occur if Council agrees to reduce promised infrastructure on this site - namely a public plaza and community centre.

There’s a need for the council to put in place site-specific provisions in the Local Environmental Plan (LEP) guaranteeing existing parking will be retained. This would simply add to the 52 existing site-specific provisions in the LEP. Otherwise, we can only assume the planning controls will allow the reduction or destruction of parking, in both our carparks, and therefore severely inhibit the crucial role played by our local businesses. (Potential Seaview St carpark outcome shown below)

modal_Seaview_St_Dulwich_Hill_lighter-3d29d58275f7aa2afbb447284c3921b8.jpg

Open space

In our submission, we raised a concern that, for the 4,245 new dwellings proposed in Dulwich Hill, just 3,720 sq/m of new open space is proposed (representing just 63cm by 63cm per person or the size of a typical carpet tile or cardboard box).

This is likely to increase pressure on Dulwich Hill’s existing open space, which is currently just a third of the council’s 13.3 square metre per person benchmark.

However, no changes to the plan are proposed and in fact by zoning large parts of the suburb for higher density, it will now be far harder to acquire any land for new open space.

Inner West Council is proposing to supply a carpet tile’s worth of open space for each new

Infrastructure

Some 18 months after the NSW Government announced Dulwich Hill and Marrickville would be subject to Transport Oriented Development reforms, the council staff are only now recommending that community consultation begin on how to spend an estimated $520 million in infrastructure contributions to flow from this development. So this is a plan for development, but not for infrastructure to support development.

The possibility of development commencing, without any infrastructure plan, is very real.

And already the council is walking back some of the infrastructure promises it made to the community on exhibition (see the Seaview St carpark mention above).

Heritage

Unfortunately, Council staff are still recommending the removal of a section of an existing Dulwich Hill heritage conservation area - at Wilga Avenue - even though the consultant’s report on which the recommendation is based does not contain a word of justification as to why this should be the case.

In fact, the report by GML says the opposite, saying of the South Dulwich Hill heritage conservation area, of which Wilga Avenue is part: “The built form is largely consistent, intact and of a good quality. The rhythm of roof forms, setback, fencing, front gardens, etc is harmonious and consistent throughout”.

Other

There are some minor changes proposed, including setting aside some areas as medium rather than high density but largely keeping the same controls.

However, most feedback has been ignored. This means the following transition between high and low density for

Hercules St will remain in place (that this is a minimum height difference - it could actually be far worse after incentives).

The Council meeting to consider three staff reports (one on the planning issues, another on infrastructure and a third on car park issues) and community feedback will be held on Tuesday, 30 September. Residents will not be able to speak to Councillors at this meeting.

If you’re attending the Dulwich Hill Festival on Sunday, look out for Save Dully’s stand.

See our submission to the exhibited plans here.

See the video summary of our submission