Shire seeks to close hinterland planning gap

THE Surf Coast Shire council aims to “fill a policy gap” about discretionary uses of Farming Zone land by adopting the recommendations of its Rural Hinterland Futures strategy into its planning scheme.

The shire has been working on the strategy for more than four years, and adopted it in May 2019.

The area covered by Rural Hinterland Futures includes most of the shire, with the exception of the built-up area of Torquay and Jan Juc and the land in the Great Otway National Park.

The officers’ report to councillors about Planning Scheme Amendment C133 at their meeting last week notes that Rural Hinterland Futures sees an opportunity to draw some of the 2.1 million annual visitors to the shire into the hinterland to sample local food, new events and destinations.

“However, new development needs to be carefully managed to ensure the continued protection of the highly valued environmental and landscape values that makes the Surf Coast such an attractive visitor destination,” the report states.

“The strategy reinforces that the primary purpose of the hinterland will continue to be farming, and careful management is needed to ensure that this land use is protected and nurtured so it can expand and evolve.”

At their meeting, councillors resolved to request authorisation from the Victorian Planning Minister to prepare and exhibit Amendment C133, and to put it on public exhibition for a month once authorised.

Cr Heather Wellington said it was one thing to create a policy document such as Rural Hinterland Futures but another thing to implement it into the planning scheme “in a way that gives people certainty and clarity about what’s likely to be approved and what is not”.

“I would say I spend 80 per cent of my time responding to concerns about land use conflicts, mainly in the hinterland – people want to exploit their land to get the most economic value out of it, neighbours often feel that what’s proposed is going to threaten their lifestyle, view, environment or sense of wellbeing,” she said.

“So I think the more planning certainty we can get so people can understand clearly what is and isn’t approved, the better.”

Cr Mike Bodsworth said the amendment raised the question, among others, of “how much growth is enough growth?”.

“I really appreciate rigorous documents like this, but one respect in which I think they lack rigour is that they tend to only tell one side of the story, which is the benefits of growth and development,” he said.