A SPECIAL council meeting will be held 24 January, in a last-ditch attempt to appeal controversial planning approval recently given by the Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal for a multi-storey aged care and residential development in Mount Eliza.
The meeting will go ahead after being cancelled in mid-January because of a lack of councillors available, and just one day before the appeal deadline.
The Ryman Healthcare proposal for a large development in Kunyung Road, Mount Eliza, has become a battleground for those trying to protect green wedge policy directions, and developers who rely on what have been described as the peninsula’s archaic zonings.
Cr David Gill, who requested the meeting with Cr Antonella Celli and Cr Debra Mar, said the outcome of the planning proposal would have “wide repercussions” for the peninsula, and would send a message that planning policy can be ignored and “loopholes allowed to enable large developments outside of the urban growth boundary”.
The development would be “another major blow delivered by the state government and VCAT to our green wedge”, he said.
Cr Gill said he will propose motions to appeal the VCAT approval of the aged care development at the Supreme Court; record council’s disapproval of the VCAT approval being given in holiday period, which made a Supreme Court appeal difficult to organise; and call on town planning minister Sonya Kilkenny to suspend consideration of Amendment C270 (green wedge zoning change) and review the VCAT decision for 60 -70 Kunyung Road, Mount.
Cr Gill is calling for the appeal on grounds that the tribunal “wrongly” gave greater weight to special use zone 2 provisions than green wedge policy directions; there was a “disregard” of Mornington Peninsula town planning policy directions, the site is outside the urban growth boundary and the development contravenes green wedge strategies; the SUZ2 was designed to protect sites in urban as well as rural zones; aspects of the first VCAT decision were criticised but were not examined; there was a lack of regard for coastal planning policy; heritage issues were not properly dealt with; and the lack of bushfire emergency management plan.
He said he would ask council to call an urgent meeting with appropriate officers as soon as possible to consider an advocacy campaign to defend the erosion of the green wedge.
“The campaign will inform our community and the state government of risks posed by planning decisions, outside of council control, that pose threats to the future of our green wedge,” he said.
However, Ryman says it rejects that the current special use zone that allowed previous development on the Kunyung Road site was an ‘historic anomaly’.
Communications manager Michael Cummings said an independent planning panel had determined that the application of the SUZ2 was “deliberate” and a result of “considered strategic planning over a long period” and cannot accurately be described as a planning anomaly or legacy zone.
Cumming said the SUZ2 has been considered appropriate for several decades despite many changes to the planning framework as they relate to the green wedge, and that even if the planning minister approved C270 as it relates to the Kunyung Road site, it would not be retroactive, and cannot affect the approval already given for the aged-care development.
Meanwhile, community group Save Reg’s Wedge has been calling on opponents of the Ryman development to write to the Premier Dan Andrews, as well as minister Kilkenny, to intervene and protect green wedge land.
First published in the Mornington News – 24 January 2023
