Planning for Fishermens Bend, 1

Still trying to get to grips with the full implications of Minister Matthew Guy's recent planning announcements relating to Fishermans Bend. Amendment VC92 was gazetted on 29 June 2012 and amends Clause 11.04-4 Central Melbourne of the Victorian Planning Provisions and all planning schemes to introduce a new objective and strategy for major development opportunities that support Central Melbourne's capital city functions. This clause now includes the Fishermans Bend Urban Renewal Area. [It even has its own acronym now FBURA]
Amendment C102 was gazetted on 5 July 2012 and amends the Schedule to Clause 61.01 of the Port Phillip Planning Scheme to make the Minister for Planning the Responsible Authority for administering the FBURA for development proposals over a certain threshold, and rezones the land to the Capital City Zone. Schedule 1 [CCZ1], removes Design and Development Overlays [Schedule 2, 8 and 9] from the land within the FBURA, introduces a new schedule to the Development Contributions Plan Overlay [DPO2] to the FBURA. The schedule for the Fishermans Bend Urban Renewal Area can be accessed here.

What does this all this planning speak mean?

• the Minister for Planning rather than the City of Port Phillip will decide future planning applications for the Fishermans Bend Urban Renewal Area

Issues and questions arising

• How will the Council be involved and what capacity will the Council have to influence outcomes?
• The terms of reference of the Project Control Group of Places Victoria, which will undertake the planning for the area, have been amended to exclude councillor representation
• What opportunities will there be for community input into planning for the renewal area to avoid - as the Minister has always said he intends - the mistakes of Docklands?
• At present, there is no policy framework in place against which to assess any development proposal
• How will the City of Port Phillip be consulted about our very important open space assets such as Murphy Reserve and North Port Oval?
• It also appears from the schedule that there will be no 3rd party appeal rights applying to any development applications

Please let me know the questions you have. I will attempt to get answers.