Heidi Kraak
Proposed changes to the Latrobe Planning scheme will bring people to the region to purchase small-acre properties, a Latrobe Valley real estate agent director has said.
The amendments to the scheme form the largest planning revision undertaken by a Gippsland council to date and involve large-scale rethinking of land use strategies which could potentially impact most areas of the municipality.
The multi-faceted amendments comprise a number of zoning and overlay changes in three key areas of housing, industry and employment and rural land use.
Addison Real Estate director Ted Addison said he had been “very critical for a long time” of the government’s rural zoning laws.
“There are hundreds of five and 10-acre blocks of land, blocks that are zoned rural so subsequently you can’t build a house on them unless you can prove you have some rural activity,” he said.
“Five-acre blocks are becoming scarcer and scarcer.
“So I think this amendment will assist us in allowing houses to be built on smaller acreage allotments, have a hobby farm as we have in the past.”
Mr Addison said there were a number of infill sites, small blocks of empty land, that were difficult to sell for residential development as developers require larger blocks to put roads and infrastructure on.
“[The amendment] is a step in the right direction to find a way to develop these lots scattered around the city boundary,” he said.
“They are sitting there because of the stringent requirements to build a house.”
Latrobe Valley Planning chief draftsman Sue Abbott supported the proposed changes however had some concerns, specifically around a 200-metre radius around Rutherglen Road, Newborough categorised by the proposed plans as having “incremental change” encouraging moderate housing growth.
“In the report it states Moe/Newborough are the lowest wage income areas in Latrobe City, our average income is the lowest … and we have an ageing population,” she said.
“There are large blocks of road that could potentially be turned into nice little two or three bedroom, single-storey buildings for the ageing.
“There are lots of people that would snap up these properties in five seconds flat … but there is nowhere to go because there is not that kind of home in those kinds of precincts.”
