VCAT Town Planning Consultant

Property Change has currently a 100% win at VCAT planning appeals. This is due to the strategy that we put in place to firstly try and negotiate with Council and other parties to agree to an amended proposal before the hearing. This is well known to be a significant cost saving however requires experience.

A recent VCAT approval for Twelve townhouses on 1800 sq.m in Heidelberg is our most significant win yet for our VCAT Town Planning Consultant team. The approved development is for two rows of six served by a central driveway and pedestrian paths on each side boundary. The two townhouses at the front and the two townhouses at the rear are two storeys in height while the four townhouses in the centre of each row are three storeys in height.

The Tribunal found:

The provision of two genuinely accessible townhouses and two other two-storey townhouses is a very good response to planning policy that seeks a diversity of dwelling types. As well as this, all townhouses have very good access to daylight, cross-ventilation and privacy, and very convenient access to their car parking spaces. These aspects weigh in the proposal’s favour.

This favourable decision would not have been possible without the evidence of Mr Waldon (St-Wise Pty Ltd, Mr John Patrick (Landscape Architects) Ross Hill (One Mile Grid Traffic Engineering), Ms Joanne Lardner (Barrister), Stuart Biggs (DM- Three Pillars), Lachlan Cloak RB Flinders, Nick Wheeler (Architect, MLD Studio) and the planning team.

See the AustLII (Australiasian Legal Information Institute) for a review on past VCAT decisions.