THE Bass Coast Shire Council is being forced to play catch-up after the owners of new blocks of land in several Wonthaggi housing estates, many with new homes already built and occupied, realised they are now subject to a costly and potentially restrictive new planning overlay.
The new overlay, designed to identify contaminated land that may not be suitable for its intended use for housing, childcare centres, kindergartens, and primary schools, is being applied discretely statewide.
But no one told the new residents in such local estates as Powlett Ridge, Northern Views, Summerfields and Parklands in Wonthaggi, that the new Environmental Audit Overlay (EAO) also applied to them, after the State Government gazetted 444 hectares of new residential land in the Wonthaggi’s North-East Precinct area on January 18 this year.
Jarod Mills, General Manager (Corporate) for Parklea, developers of the Parklands Estate, off Korumburra-Wonthaggi and McGibbony's roads, says landowners who have purchased in the estate, especially those who built there as much as four and five years ago, were absolutely livid to find a new, unresolved overlay on their title. And rightly so, he says.
“The overlays have been wrongly applied, especially where people have already built and are living here,” Mr Mills said this week.
“There might have been a couple of haysheds on the land once, when it was used as a farm, but there’s never been any suggestion that the land is unsuitable for housing. It’s ridiculous. They should be removed,” he said.
Mr Mills, who hasn’t been officially informed by the shire about the imposition of the new EAOs, was responding to a communique sent out by one of the owners of a building block in Bottle Tree Road (near McGibbony’s Road), and passed on to him by a building industry colleague who received it from a shire employee no less. Both he and his parents have been caught up in the mess as purchasers of blocks in two different estates.
The letterdrop has now had wide coverage, but not as a result of any proactive effort by the Bass Coast Shire.
It advises owners of land in the North East precinct that they could be up for a long and expensive process, costing “potentially upwards of $50,000” to address the requirements of the Environmental Audit Overlay (EAO).
Managing Director of Beveridge Williams, Grant Hailes, representing one of the firms which can supply the environmental assessment services needed, is hopeful it won't cost that much.
Speaking exclusively to the Sentinel-Times this week, he confirmed that individual owners of land, who wished to address the conditions of Section 45.03 of the Bass Coast Planning Scheme, relating to EAOs, could be up for as much as $12,000 to $15,000 to have a preliminary risk screen assessment statement prepared.
“If groups of residents, in the same area, were able to get together, it could keep the costs down further,” Mr Hailes said.
He said developers of larger sites would be able to address the contamination assessment issue in the early stages of their project and remove any need for an Environmental Audit Overlay on the land permanently.
But other planning and environment consultants believe this may be optimistic.
They say it's a highly unusual situation to have a new contamination assessment overlay applied to blocks of land that have already been titled, much less built on.
"I don't know how you'd even conduct a proper assessment on small sites like that, especially when the houses have already been built, roads added and kerb and channelling.
"These overlays (Environmental Audit Overlays) have an important role to play but I'm not sure they can be retrospectively applied to a new estate where houses have already been built.
"We're saying a preliminary risk screen assessment statement will cost no less than $20,000 and up to $40,000 but you can't defitively prove that there is no contamination unless a full environmental audit is carried out and that could cost up to $80,0000."
So, that's potentially more than $100,000 to get the EAO removed from your title and Section 32, in the event you want to sell, meanwhile no further developoment can go ahead; new house, garage, shed, swimming pool; anything requiring a permit.
And if some sort of contamination is found, even if it's as a result of the building project itself; spilled paint, concrete slurry etc, you could be up for thousands more to make the block compliant.
But the impost remains for those who have bought land in the affected estates, and they need only enter their property’s address on the ‘Property and Parcel Search Results’ section of the state government’s https://www.land.vic.gov.au/property-and-parcel-search website to see if a new Environmental Audit Overlay has been introduced on their land.
In the absence of any advice from the Bass Coast Shire Council, a member of the community, impacted by the introduction of the new overlays, has sent out his own information sheet to local stakeholders, including residential estate developers, builders and affected property owners, as follows:
“Do you know an Environmental Audit Overlay is on your property?” he has written.
“To confirm this. Go to website VicPlan and type your full address into the search box. Any planning scheme overlays will be shown on the left as you scroll down.
“When did this happen? On January 18, 2024.
“Why did this happen? It was implemented as part of the Bass Coast Planning Scheme Amendment C152 base. You can view an explanatory report on the Bass Coast Shire Council website (https//vpa.vic.gov.au/project/wonthaggi-north-east/) or call their office at 76 McBride Avenue Wonthaggi for further information 1300 226 278.
“What is an Environmental Audit Overlay? It is a planning tool that is applied to local councils and other planning authorities to identify sites that have known identified or reasonably suspected or potential contamination.
“How does this affect you? When you apply to build a house, shed, swimming pool or anything that requires a planning permit, you will be obligated to meet the requirements of the Environmental Audit Overlay.
“The overlay will now appear on your Section 32 if you were to sell your property. To address the requirements of the Environmental Audit Overlay is a very expensive and long process, potentially costing upwards of $50,000.”
The document goes on to say that the Environmental Audit Overlays have been introduced to ensure that any risk of contamination is ruled out or dealt with appropriately, but instead of falling to the developers to investigate, it has impacted to the individual owners of the blocks.
“Our family purchased a block in the affected area late last year and were only made aware of the overlay when our builder applied for a building permit.
“We are trying to raise awareness of this matter as its implications on the town of Wonthaggi are immense. At this stage we are unsure just how many properties are affected however, we estimate the number to be in the hundreds if not thousands potentially.”
Jarod Mills of Parklea has confirmed that up to 1000 blocks, already sold, hundreds of them with houses already built and occupied, have been hit by the change on January 18, but that it goes further still and will almost certainly slow down the rate of building approvals and starts.
“In recent days, we have been advised the land within the Wonthaggi North East Precinct Structure Plan (PSP) has been entirely encumbered with an Environmental Audit Overlay (EAO),” Mr Mills said this week.
Ultimately, up to 5000 blocks of residential land, will be affected.
“This includes completed dwellings within the precinct,” he said.
However, while the whole of the Wonthaggi North East PSP area now has the EAO impost on it, in other parts of the state, the new EAO planning requirements have been applied more discretely.
For example, with the Ballarat North PSP, the Victorian Planning Authority has advised that “the EOA currently only affects a small portion of land in the southeast of the precinct, adjoining the Midland Highway”.
It advises that other parcels in the precinct may be added if further potential for contamination is identified.
This could have been the approach adopted for the Wonthaggi North East Precinct Structure Plan rather than tar all with the same brush.
It is understood that not only were local developers, builders, conveyancers and planning consultants unaware of the implications of Amendment C152, with regard to introducing the new contamination assessment overlays, but the Bass Coast Shire Councillors themselves only heard about it last week and were due to receive a briefing on the implications of the planning change on Wednesday this week.
It is further understood that the shire’s planners may have raised their concerns about the Environmental Audit Overlays being introduced across the whole Wonthaggi North East Precinct area but the decision was ultimately taken out of their hands by the Victorian Planning Authority.
It doesn’t however, excuse the shire from making stakeholders aware of the issues involved, especially the owners of new blocks of land in the affected estates.
It should be noted that the Planning and Environment Act 1987 gives local councils the power to apply or remove EAOs but would need to introduce a new amendment to their planning scheme to do so.
As of halfway through last year, EAOs were introduced across the state as a planning tool applied by local councils and other planning authorities to identify sites that have known, identified or reasonably suspected contamination or potential contamination.
Whether there has been an assessment of the Wonthaggi North East PSP area to identify sites of known or suspected contamination is not known. It has also not been explained whether this is simply a risk-averse cover-all policy which fails to take into account the delay it will cause to the development of new housing, in a perfectly suitable area in the middle of the state’s worst housing crisis.
Should even low levels of contamination be identified, from former farming activity on the subject land, for example, the owners of new blocks, who may have already built their dream home, could be up for expensive remediation costs.
