It has been a busy 12 months for Bega Valley Shire Council planning staff. The planning services section was restructured to help deal more efficiently with an ever increasing number of development applications and significant progress was made on a number of important planning initiatives.
Those initiatives include a major review of all rural lands in the Bega Valley Shire and a revised commercial strategy.
Council’s Planning Services Manager, Brian Moore, announced in August last year that his section was being restructured to enable staff to address the Shire’s development pressures and planning needs more effectively.
The restructure saw the section divided into two separate teams with one responsible for the north of the Shire and the other responsible for the south.
Council’s Director of Environment, Planning and Development Services, Garret Barry, said staff had dealt with a record number of applications for residential lots and apartments in 2003–04, including major developments in Eden, Merimbula and Bega.
He said all this had been achieved despite Council having to deal with larger and more complex development applications than ever before.
Workshops were held throughout the Shire as part of the Rural Lands Review, providing local residents with an opportunity to identify what they want the Shire’s rural areas to look like in 15 to 20 years’ time and to set some strategies in place to get there. Issues being considered as part of the review include the following.
- a reduction and fragmentation of prime agricultural land as a result of subdivision in the Shire
- concessional lots
- subdivision of land for non agricultural uses and the potential for future conflict between different land uses
- increases in land values which have made it difficult for farmers to increase the size of their holdings
- the viability of farming in the Bega Valley Shire and changes in agriculture
- biodiversity
- ecologically sustainable development and water quality.
“There is a need to provide flexibility of use while at the same time maintaining certainty and confidence, minimising adverse community and environmental impacts and maximising opportunities for landowners and managers to achieve sustainable outcomes,” Mr Barry said.
Workshops were also held in Eden, Merimbula, Bega and Bermagui to discuss a revised commercial strategy being developed as part of Council’s 20 Year Plan.
Mr Barry said the aim of the workshops had been to obtain feedback from the business community on possible changes to planning controls and zone boundaries as well as major capital works within the larger commercial areas.
The updated strategy would incorporate specific plans for each town centre, with Council hoping to provide draft plans for public comment in the first half of 2005.
