June 30, 2014
FRANKSTON REFORMED ZONES AMENDMENT UPDATE
Frankston City Council, like many Councils have been undergoing an amendment process to introduce the new residential zones into their planning scheme. As part of that process a Panel Hearing was held earlier in the year and the Panel report with recommendations has just been released. The Panel found that there were several fundamental flaws in the amendment. They recommended that this amendment be abandoned and that the General Residential Zone without a schedule be applied in the interim. The Panel provided a number of things to be reviewed and justified for any future amendment. Frankston Council have released the report to the public and are inviting submissions until the 1st of July 2014. Details regarding the report and making submissions can be found here.One issue discussed in the Panel report was the appropriateness of the proposed zones in some areas. The basis of many of the submissions, and therefore of consideration to the Panel was whether the proposed restrictive Neighbourhood Residential Zone was appropriate. The Panel consider that the use of this zone had not been justified sufficiently and that the criteria used to make decisions on the zone have not been appropriate in all instances. In particular they were not supportive of using this zone simply because of single dwelling covenants or stormwater management issues in the area.