Community & Business
17 November, 2023
Council seeks approval for changes to planning scheme
CHANGES to Tablelands Regional Council Planning Scheme that will allow some Tablelands landholders to host RVs on their properties have been endorsed and a request will now be sent to Minister for State Development, Infrastructure and Local Government Steven Miles to support the amendments.
CHANGES to Tablelands Regional Council Planning Scheme that will allow some Tablelands landholders to host RVs on their properties have been endorsed and a request will now be sent to Minister for State Development, Infrastructure and Local Government Steven Miles to support the amendments.
The changes will enable RVs to be hosted on private properties in the General Rural or Broad Hectare zone but landholders wanting to allow more than six RVCs will have to go through a code assessable process with council, and properties that wish to host more than 10 RVs will be impact assessable, giving the public a say.
Council had originally proposed that landowners could host up to six RVs allowed on Rural, Rural Residential and Emerging Communities zones for up to six consecutive nights as an “accepted development” and up to 20 RVs for 13 nights on properties in the Rural and Broad Hectare zones, but this hit a raw nerve with local caravan parks owners, fearful it would undermine their businesses.
This part of the scheme amendments sparked more than 112 submissions, with the vast majority objecting to the amendment based on numerous factors including that caravan parks were not at capacity even in peak periods of the year; concerns about how council would regulate or police RV camping on farms; concerns it would make existing caravan parks unviable; concerns about the environmental impact of “unregulated” RV grounds; impacts on the amenity of surrounding properties and farms; and concerns over biosecurity.
In October last year, council considered the feedback and made changes to limit the hosting of RVs to properties only in the General Rural or Broad Hectare zones.
Apart from the changes to allow the hosting of RVs, other amendments are being made to the planning scheme which are aimed at cutting red tape for development.
Development Services acting executive manager Kelly Reaston said the proposed changes had been the subject of a series of workshops with the building industry.
“What these scheme amendments seek to do is to try and rectify some of the workability issues with the scheme, so while the self-contained RV amendments are probably the most publicly facing amendments, there’s a whole series of other amendments that I think have drastically improved how the scheme works on a day-to-day basis,” she said.
If the Minister agrees with the proposed amendments, the changes will come back to council for final adoption.
