By Dailan Pugh
Byron Shire Council is now proposing to double the shire’s current population by releasing 3,800 hectares of rural land for residential development. This is the biggest land release in Byron’s history.
In gross area, this is equivalent to ten new West Byrons plus ten new Ewingsdales.
If you allow them to get away with this, they will include these lands in the current regional strategy and, like West Byron, there will be nothing you or anyone else will be able to do to stop them proceeding in the future.
Byron Shire Council’s draft Rural Land Use Strategy identifies 1,100ha of land as suitable for the creation of seven new towns: one south-east of Ewingsdale (Balraith Lane), one at Skinner’s Shoot (Yager’s Lane), one south-west of Brunswick Heads (Saddle Road), three north and west of Mullumbimby (Clays Road, Dudgeons Road, Coolamon Scenic Drive), and one west of Billinudgel.
Council estimates that these areas encompass a total of 746 ha of potentially developable land. At West Byron the 55ha zoned for residential development is claimed to accommodate 1,100 houses (though it could be over 1,500). Based on this ratio, the 746ha could potentially encompass some 15,000 houses.
There are currently around 15,000 houses in Byron shire, so alone these land releases could double Byron’s population. Pretty impressive for a 20-year strategy.
Given the profitability of the Byron Bay real-estate market and council’s laissez-faire approach to developers, it can be expected that the towns at Ewingsdale and Skinner’s Shoot will proceed quickly.
With West Byron’s 1,100-plus houses poised to overwhelm Byron Bay’s infrastructure, 4,600 additional houses is the last thing Byron Bay needs.
Council’s Rural Land Use Strategy identifies another six rural areas totalling 2,732ha for Large Lot Residential, Multiple Occupancy and Community Title developments. Some 88ha of this is specifically tagged for large lot residential.
They say only 885ha of this is potentially developable and will accommodate 415-815 dwellings (370-740 around Main Arm and The Pocket). Though, thanks to last minute amendments by Cr Sol Ibrahim, council is proposing to allow such developments throughout rural areas.
That is not all, council is also promoting re-subdivision of existing large-lot residential areas.
It is back to open slather on our rural areas. Nowhere is safe.
Based on inflated population growth estimates the 2006 Far North Coast Regional Strategy identified a target for Byron shire of 2,600 dwellings over 25 years to 2031. Over the eight years to 2014 our population did not grow as quickly as expected, yet council provided 1,231 residential approvals at well above target rates.
The current draft of the 2016 North Coast Regional Plan identifies a target of 3,750–4,500 new dwellings for Byron shire over the 25 years from 2011-2036. This new target represents an increase in our growth rate from 20 per cent to 27 per cent over 25 years. By comparison Ballina’s growth rate has been reduced from 50 per cent down to 18 per cent.
Even if we accept our new target, there is no need for any more land releases to achieve it.
Since 2011, council has approved over 700 new dwellings. There are currently new urban subdivisions approved for over 1,800 dwellings which are yet to be developed (West Byron, Seacliffs, Habitat, Bayside Brunswick, Tallowwood Ridge, and around Bangalow), and allowances for over 1,000 dwellings as infill in existing urban areas.
In 2014 council amended our Local Environment Plan to also allow secondary dwellings on all rural and urban lots, potentially allowing thousands of new dwellings throughout the Shire.
So why on earth is our council hell-bent on slashing environmental protections and proposing huge new land releases capable of doubling our population in the guise of a 20-year Rural Land Use Strategy? And why are they keeping quiet about it?
They seem to be hoping that if they release enough land the Gold Coast developers will come to cash in on Byron’s increasingly tarnished image.
Cr Ibrahim has no justification (except for ideological) to keep on slashing environmental protections, as it is clear that there is more than enough unconstrained land to satisfy our needs. We can have our koalas and develop too.
Councillors talk about idealised ‘eco’ villages and affordable housing, but do nothing to achieve them.
If we want to have a new town, or maybe some small villages, why don’t we take into account all constraints to identify potential lands, have a competition inviting landowners to put forward genuinely innovative proposals for unconstrained lands, choose the best proposal, and impose the planning rules needed to achieve it?
We have plenty of time to do something truly good.
You only have until the 20 May to tell councillors (of all persuasions) to put their outrageous Rural Land Use Strategy in the landfill bin where it belongs.
NOTE: Also includes Linnaeus at Broken Head as Community Title
Just how will the new Byron Hospital cope with no helipad. When the West Byron estate was released the infrastructure was not thought of in how it should support that estate. There are complaints of increased traffic gridlocks.
In good town planning the infrastructure is planned and established and then the housing is added to the infrastructure. Part of the infrastructure to protect this new very valuable asset would be a bigger and longer wall along the beaches to keep the ocean back in Climate Change as the ocean advances.
Now every day when I finish work at around 5pm in the Industrial Estate, there is a bad traffic all the way till after the hospital roundabout, the hospital is not even operating, imagine when is in full operation what will happen to the traffic at around 5??!!……
Amazes me how they don’t plan and study before they build something…. Sorry but our council is really disappointing the Byron community….
Yes. It’s time for an all-out counter-attack.
How sad, poor Byron. How can they be so blind?
They aren’t blind. They are just property developers.
The roads are already atrocious and inadequate with the current Byron Shire population. Developers just want to make a quick buck and couldn’t care less about the environment or the locals.
The greed of the Byron Shire Real Estate Agents and Negative gearing Investors has driven the prices up beyond an affordable price for workers in this town to either rent or to buy.
The Supply and demand factor has played into the hands of the past green Councillors and Real estate Agents for too long. they sat on their hands and continued with their constant cry of ( we need more affordable Housing)
They had the chance to build affordable housing on land they held and release smaller areas for development but chose to let the market run its course. That is why a large percentage of Byron bay is investor owned and holiday let.
Businesses need tradies, tradies need workers and workers need somewhere to live that is affordable. This new land release will at least give my children a chance to buy a block of land and be able to raise the next generation of Byronites.
Mankind has adapted to all change that has come before it, and the future will make us look at better ways to build roads over sensitive areas and supply ways in and out of areas.
We have two roads in and out of Byron so maybe as a natural growth factor that will change as well.
I too get pissed off with the traffic, tourists and gridlocks. But it is not going away and this sort of development brings forward new ideas and inovations to solve problems. We need to stop the selfish idea that we wont let Byron grow, it has to the only other way is to go UP and that would be a bad result!!!
I can see the new signs on the entrances to the Shire now:-
BYRON: DEVELOPERS’ PARADISE! GATEWAY TO THE GOLD COAST & DEGRADATION ?
(Thanks to the major achievement of the 2016 Council & their Develooer “mates”
BUT ALAS! The signs that can be erected at Lismore shire entrances could read:-
LISMORE, everything Byron professes to be but isn’t anymore! (Thanks to the initiative of our Council & the residents)
I can’t believe what’s happening. Myself and others fought hard in the 1990’s to stop rampant development when Cr Ross Tucker was the leader of the pro-development faction and was hell bent on seeing Byron Shire developed without concern for our environment or the communities wishes.
History shows that, at the 1995 election, a pro-community Council was swept to power with a 7-3 majority. Cr Ibrahim is of the same mould as Ross Tucker was, bit his plans seem even more grandiose, and totally out of sync with what, I believe, the Byron Shire community envisions for the future.
With an election soon, it is time that we galvanise again and work together to make the community at large aware of the issues facing us, and to see these pro-development Councillors are not re-elected.
Isn’t is amazing what happens when you put in” parking metres” and the council starts making some extra revenue ….all of a sudden a small tourist seaside country town with no infrastructure, no amenities and no work !!! transforms into …..????
no decent roads, no jobs, no affordable housing..they only want the rates money to use for a seawall around the shire..
The “Californication” of the Coastline continues; with help, from its victims, the Residents. Yes, Rosscoe Phillips is on the money. Unless concerned folk mobilise against Council and its “Godfather”, State GovCo, the Byron Shire will ignore its environmental credentials, discard its “alternative” history, forget its agricultural heritage and turn the place into yet another investment strategy option in a landscape riddled with Coal Seam Gas wells, Coal mines, Tourist distractions and Fast Food and Grog resellers. Sounds like 1850 not 2016. Debt drives it all folks. Don’t forget, this is driven by Macquarie St. Byron Shire “Council” is a unit of State GovCo and will do what it is told.
We have to make sure this does not happen.
Although I live in byron shire I grew up in an area which got taken over and destroyed by developers. It changes a place and should be stopped in byron. Byron residents should do everything we can to keep this area as it is. Don’t add more houses and create bigger problems. The roads can’t handle the traffic as it is. Money and wealth for people who probably don’t even live here shouldn’t be accepted over what is a naturally beautiful place just as it is.