Eurobodalla Shire councillors with former general manager Warwick Winn. Photo: ESC.
Eurobodalla Shire Council’s processes around planning for housing in Batemans Bay in the context of the draft Batemans Bay Master Plan (BBMP) have been criticised by community members.
Resident and architect Stephanie Chiu and Brett Stevenson, co-convenor of community forum A Better Eurobodalla, spoke on the topic at a recent public access meeting.
They questioned the grounds for council’s $200,000 grant from the NSW Government to prepare a Local Environmental Plan amendment and development control plans to implement the BBMP with an indicative dwelling yield of 8000 houses.
Ms Chiu recommended that council halt the BBMP process and decouple it from the grant so that council’s strategic planning team could focus on delivering the grant’s primary aim of enabling more diverse and affordable housing in Batemans Bay.
She said the BBMP’s 75-year timeframe was “inconsistent, unprecedented, and likely inaccurate”. She said the industry standard was 20 years from current census data. The NSW Government’s guide for housing, and council’s Local Strategic Planning Statement and Community Strategic Plan are 20-year documents.
Ms Chiu said in the grant application council staff gave an indicative dwelling yield for Batemans Bay of 8000 dwellings, potentially housing 16,000 people.
That was inconsistent with Judith Stubb’s 2023 Local Housing Strategy Background Report which estimated the entire shire’s population would increase by 9400 by 2041, with 4700 extra dwellings. The report was prepared for council in association with its housing strategy and used forecast.id data.
Population forecasts have since fallen, with forecast.id’s late-2024 update projecting shire population growth of 5700 by 2041 with 2860 dwellings.
Ms Chiu’s point was that the forecast yield of 8000 dwellings for 16,000 additional people in Batemans Bay was far beyond what forecast.id was projecting for the entire shire by 2041.
Batemans Bay’s tourism gateway and landmark sites. Photo: ESC website.
Dr Stevenson also questioned the basis of the projected 8000 dwellings.
He said ABE expected that before any level of government made decisions that would impact its community, it would undertake broad and meaningful consultation, listen to and share expert advice, and proceed using a transparent decision-making process.
Dr Stevenson said it should be a straightforward process to access the data and assumptions used by council for its $200,000 NSW Government grant to develop a planning proposal based on the draft BBMP “which claims to deliver 8000 new dwellings”.
Councillor Anthony Mayne originally asked for the relevant data and assumptions at the 27 May council meeting.
Dr Stevenson then made an informal request to council staff on 16 June. He was later told he must submit a formal request via the Government Information Public Access Act 2009, known as the GIPA Act.
He submitted that request on 11 July. It took until 29 September for council to release the information.
On examination the data and assumptions had not been supplied. He was told “there are hundreds of pages of data that can lead to conclusions. All you need is a calculator”.
“Given this failure of due process, I am now formally requesting that council provide the data and assumptions which have informed its estimates of additional dwellings in the draft BBMP,” he said.
Five key gateway and landmark sites in the draft Batemans Bay Master Plan. Photo: ESC website.
Dr Stevenson then turned to the draft BBMP which he said contained no references and few clues about where information had been sourced, what assumptions were made, and how its conclusions were derived.
Additionally, he said while council’s agenda papers for its October meeting indicated that council had received a geotechnical analysis of the draft BBMP site, the study was not available on council’s website.
Finally, Dr Stevenson said the 10-page summary of community submissions on the draft BBMP was “highly selective and clearly insufficient in scope and scale to do justice to the volume and variety of feedback” council received during the draft BBMP’s exhibition period.
Ms Chiu asked council to strive towards best practice in planning by investing in an independent urban planning peer review of all the BBMP’s documentation and processes. She asked that council’s general manager continued to review performance and service delivery around the $200,000 government grant “ensuring a good foundation which enables an excellent urban design response to Batemans Bay”.
Two residents from Congo again addressed councillors about the legacy issue of reopening Congo Road.
The first, Karen Harper, said the community was not asking for a “gold standard” road, asked for an update on council’s negotiations about a land swap and asked if council was prepared to meet the Congo Community Association and Member for Bega Dr Michael Holland about potential state government funding support if land acquisition was needed to reopen the road.
Next Mark Harris, an environmental scientist, wanted assurance there would not be any environmental constraints to a new road being built at a reasonable cost in a reasonable timeframe.
