20 May New Housing Rules For Kingston Council
Kingston City Council are currently undergoing a consultation process as part of developing the new housing and planning rules for the municipality. More details on the draft strategies and the drop in sessions can be found here.
Following initial research and consultation, the Kingston Council have prepared a draft Housing Strategy and Neighbourhood Character Study. As the current Neighbourhood Character Study dates back to 2000 (with minor amendment in 2007) it is clear that a more up to date study is warranted!
Once the Housing Strategy and Neighbourhood Character Study have been reviewed and adopted by the Council a Planning Scheme Amendment will be prepared to implement these controls into the planning scheme. If you are interested you can find out more details on the Planning Scheme Amendment Process here .
Neighbourhood Character Study
The new Neighbourhood Character Study has identified six character types:
- Garden Suburban
- Garden Court
- Coastal Suburban
- Urban Contemporary
- Urban Waterways
- Mixed Use Intensive
With a preferred character statement and design guidelines for each. This is a similar approach to other more recent neighbourhood character studies and will hopefully provide more guidance on what is being sought. The current study focuses on classifying specifics such as setbacks and roofing types, with little room for considering how development has shifted over the past 19 years.
Housing Strategy
The draft Housing Strategy has classified areas based on the degree of change and contribution to future housing that they will provide. The four categories are:
- Substantial Change
- Transitional Change
- Incremental Change
- Limited Change
The classifications of the areas flow from the current housing strategy which identified land as being predominantly either Increased Housing Diversity or Incremental Change Housing. The new draft strategy provides for greater delineation between growth strategies for different areas with the inclusion of additional categories. The housing strategy provides a housing type “transitional change” that provides a stepping down or transition of growth and housing form from the “substantial change” areas to the “incremental change” areas.
New Residential Zones
As part of the changes proposed by both documents new residential zones are proposed. Kingston is proposing to include additional areas of Residential Growth Zone. They are also proposing to introduce the Neighbourhood Residential Zone into the area. The system will replace the current zones which include multiple General Residential Zones for classification. The new zones are proposed to be implemented to follow these guidelines:
At a broad level it looks like the Council’s use of substantial and incremental change areas (which translate generally to Residential Growth Zone and Neighbourhood Residential Zone) direct more growth to areas closest to shopping and public transport and limit growth in areas further away from services, while providing for increased housing overall to support the Plan Melbourne.
More Information
You can look up the current and proposed planning controls and neighbourhood character information for any address in Kingston here.
The consultation process will be running until June 16th. You can visit one of the information sessions to participate in the process or send in a survey with your views on the proposed changes. Details are found on the website that Kingston have set up here.
We will review the draft strategy and study in greater detail and will update this page as the planning process progresses.