Plans for the first major residential development within the West Byron urban release area feature nearly a dozen breaches of planning and environmental protection rules and should not be approved, Byron Council staff say.
In a significant moment in the unfolding story of West Byron, a Development Application (DA) for 310 Ewingsdale Road is due to come before this week’s Byron Council planning meeting for determination.
It is the first time such an application has come before Council since the Land & Environment Court handed down its decisions in relation to development on the site as a whole.
The development in question relates to a section of the West Byron site at 310 Ewingsdale Rd.
The developers, listed as 310 Properties Pty Ltd, are proposing to build 20 units spread across five buildings, and a basement carpark for 44 cars, at a total cost of $14.7m.
The proposed maximum building height is 10.53 metres – an exceedance of 17 per cent above the nine-metre height development standard for that part of Byron.
According to Council staff, the two and three-storey buildings also exceed the rules in terms of bulk, scale and overshadowing.
They also reportedly involve the removal of 19 trees, including a number of protected species such as the rough-shelled bush nut tree (Macadamia tetraphylla), which is listed as vulnerable under the Biodiversity Conservation Act.
Council staff have given the proposal a scathing report card, recommending refusal on nine separate grounds.
Multiple state agencies have also expressed concerns about the proposal, including the Department of Planning and Environment, Energy Australia, and Water NSW.
‘The proposal is an overdevelopment of the site and would set a precedent that is not in the public interest,’ Council planner, Patricia Docherty, said in her report to this week’s Council meeting.
‘The development in its current form is not supported on the basis of excessive, height, bulk, scale, and associated impacts of overlooking, overshadowing, environmental impacts, and amenity impacts that detract from the lawful use of surrounding residential land and public open space’ Ms Docherty continued.
‘In particular, the proposed development exceeds the nine-metre height limit and in the circumstances, there are insufficient grounds to justify such a variation on this “greenfield site” at West Byron’.
Sets precedent
Ms Docherty said that granting a height variation to the first major residential development within the west Byron Urban Release Are, which had prominence and frontage to ‘the main gateway to Byron Bay’ would set a precedent that Council ‘does not value its development standards for this site, and would prejudice Council’s planning controls for the area into the future’.
Ms Docherty’s report reveals that some months ago, Council sent the developer a letter documenting extensive issues both Council staff and state agency officers had with the DA, meaning the application in its current form could not be supported.
These issues included both the breaches described above, and the developer’s failure to provide all of the information required in a development application.
Council staff requested that the application be withdrawn.
However, the developer responded on November 3 to advise that no further information would be provided and that the application would not be withdrawn.
It requested that Council complete the assessment of its DA and determination based on the information it had provided.
The developer’s response raises questions about whether, and how, it intends to obtain development consent in relation to the site.
The community ran a long-running campaign in a bid to stop the West Byron development from getting planning approval. However, in 2020, the NSW Land & Environment Court decided in relation to one section of the site (Harvest Estate), to approve the subdivision of six lots into 149 lots, consisting of 145 standard residential lots and four larger lots.
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