Shire urged to rethink Urban Futures Strategy

A DEVELOPER is urging the Surf Coast Shire to rethink its proposed Urban Futures Strategy (UFS), arguing growth across the shire will be constrained too tightly and will result in the municipality falling thousands of homes short of the Victorian government’s housing targets.

Councillors held a hearing of submissions meeting about the UFS on Tuesday last week.

When finished, the UFS will establish a policy framework to guide sustainable urban growth within the shire and guide future land use planning at the township and precinct level.

Its key directions include strategically identified locations for infill development within the protected settlement boundary of Torquay and Jan Juc, planning for the majority of longer-term urban growth to be accommodated in Winchelsea, and ensuring urban development occurs within designated settlement boundaries and discouraging proposals outside of the locations identified in the UFS.

Under the Victorian government’s target, announced in June 2024, the shire must build an extra 7,800 homes by 2051.

Speaking about his company’s submission, Gareth Bellchambers from Ample said the developers supported the Distinctive Areas and Landscape process for Torquay and Jan Juc, but this meant the entire shire now only had one growth front – Winchelsea – and this was not enough.

He said there were 1,700 lots across the shire’s eight townships, and another 3,000 in Winchelsea, and the total of 4,700 was “not even half of what we need, and the lion’s share of them are not affordable”.

“Infill development is not commercially viable, unfortunately. We’d like it to be, but it’s not – even if it was, it’s totally unaffordable to the people who needed it the most.

“The end of supply is in sight.”

He said there were, as of his presentation, only 626 lots in Winchelsea and 26 in Deans Marsh to cater for the estimated 11,500 people in the shire aged 19 or under who would be looking for a home over the next 25 years.

“By the time the UFS is approved and housing under it is brought to the market, 3,000 to 4,000 of our own [children] will have been forced into the housing market and there’ll be nothing there for them.”

Ample is asking the shire to modify the UFS to designate land near Buckley as a Future Investigation Area to allow its not-for-profit “Buckley Village” development, which Mr Bellchambers said would provide “several thousand homes that will be affordable”.

“The historic thinking that got us into this housing crisis is not the thinking that will get us out of it,” he said.

The public exhibition period drew 54 submissions, with 19 of the 34 individual submitters being residents and landowners in Winchelsea, or those with an interest in the town.

The shire will adopt the final UFS by the middle of this year.

For more information on the UFS, head to yoursay.surfcoast.vic.gov.au/UFS