The contentious Cudgen Connection development proposed on State Significant Farmland (SSF) on the protected Cudgen Plateau next to the Tweed Valley Hospital (TVH) site was in front of Tweed Shire Councillors at yesterday’s planning meeting.
The council staff report had recommended that the application for gateway determination should be approved however, Kignscliff Raptepayers and Progress Association (KRAPA) were clear in their objections to the proposal and highly critical of the inaccurate statements and reports relating to the SSF site.
When the TVH was proposed on the SSF the issue split the local community and when the hospital was approved and the site re-zoned from SSF both sides of the political spectrum gave ‘iron clad’ promises that there would be no further development of or rezoning of SSF on the Cudgen plateau.
Six to one in favour of refusal
‘We are so grateful to the six councillors who voted to refuse this application,’ Peter Newton, President of KRPA told The Echo.
‘Particularly the community could not have had better representation than from Mayor Cherry, Deputy Mayor Dennis and Councillor Firth who forensically addressed every community concern in speaking to the item. It’s disappointing that it was left to Mayor Cherry and others to detail the clear shortcomings and inconsistencies within this proposal, which we would have expected to see in the Council report.’
Mayor Cherry spoke to the proposed refusal telling the meeting that, ‘In order to support a variation allowed for under the North Coast Regional Plan, we need to be satisfied that the variation is supported by a sound evidence base addressing agricultural capability and sustainability. Is the land capable, is this sustainable?
‘We’re required to form a view as to whether the proposal has to strategic and site specific merit. For the clarity strategic merit means that the proposal has alignment with the New South Wales Strategic Planning Framework and government priorities. It also needs to have alignment with our priorities, and those that have council that have been approved by the state government. Is it consistent with the North Coast Regional Plan? Is it consistent with the Tweed Local Strategic Planning Statement with our strategies with the Tweed Regional Economic Development Strategy.
‘These are the questions we’ve had to consider and this is the site suitable for the relevant development. This is one question that hasn’t really come out in this assessment at all. Where’s the strategic assessment and the demonstrated need for 120 bed private hospital in this location, where is consideration of the impacts that that might have on our Tweed Valley Hospital on the existing private hospital John Flyn, on our other day surgeries in Tweed Heads? Does the proposal give regard and assess the impacts of the natural environment, including the known resources and what is our SSF but a finite resource? We can’t make any more of it.’
Cr Cherry continued to point out that the Northwest Regional Plan, objective eight supported the ‘productivity of agricultural land’ and that it states that ‘here’s only one strategy in this section and it says local planning should protect and maintain agricultural productive capacity in the region are directing urban, rural residential and other incompatible uses away from important farmland’.
‘The ministerial direction 9.4 Farmland of State and Regional Significance on the New South Wales North Coast specifically states that a planning proposal must not rezone land identified as SSF for urban or rural residential purposes, unless it can satisfy the planning secretary that the planning proposal is consistent with the North Coast Regional Plan and the Northern Rivers Farmland Protection Project 2005. That protection project requires us to prioritise rural uses over non-rural uses neither of those documents are consistent with this variation that’s being requested,’ continued Cr Cherry.
Nothing new
Not raised in the meeting but highlighted by KRPA was the fact that ‘The NSW government (in particular, Health Infrastructure) have indicated several times that the combined available land on the Tweed Valley Hospital site and Kingscliff TAFE site is all that is required for the full development of a health/education precinct and have included most of what is listed in the Cudgen Connection proposal in future stages of the TVH masterplan. This is further endorsed in the Kingscliff Locality Plan,’ explained Mr Newton.
Another concern raised by KRPA included the fact that both the council report and the developer’s GHD report combined state and regionally significant farmland together to arrive at a total loss of SSF at 0.034 per cent.
‘If this land is rezoned it equates to a loss of a little over one per cent of the Cudgen State Significant Farmland,’ explained KRPA.
‘It is disingenuous of the GHD report to combine state and regionally significant farmland’ and ‘it is inaccurate to say that we are discussing “Important Farmland, formerly known as State Significant Farmland” – this land is still designated State Significant Farmland which we [recently] confirmed in conversations with State government.’
Developer won’t back down
Speaking to the meeting conservative Cr Warren Polglase told the meeting that the developer wouldn’t be walking away from the proposal.
‘Well I support the proposal as it is,’ Cr Polglase told the meeting.
‘I will be voting in favour of it and I realise that the applicant is definitely going to go to review and I guess a determination will be put forward to the Regional Planning Panel, which will finish up on the minister’s desk.’
Mr Newton told The Echo that, ‘This result was the outcome our community wanted and deserved. While this decision is a very clear endorsement for protecting our precious SSF and the unsuitability of the Cudgen Connection proposal, we do appreciate that this is one step in the process.’
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