Page 1679 - Week 06 - Wednesday, 8 May 2013

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This brings me to the solar policies that are intended to apply in residential areas under variation 306 but that are now at risk under this motion. To protect the solar access of neighbours, variation 306 proposes to limit overshadowing of neighbourhood blocks to not more than the shadow cast by a 1.8-metre fence. In response to submissions by sections of the housing industry on the new rules as they have been applied in Wright, variation 306 makes a significant concession by allowing the solar fence to be raised for a specified 10 metre section of a block’s southern boundary to 2.4 metres. In many cases this will allow part of the dwelling, ordinarily the garage, to be erected close to the southern boundary.

These provisions apply to all large blocks greater than 500 square metres, all blocks in the Molonglo valley, all mid-sized blocks approved on or after the commencement date of this variation and all compact blocks approved on or after the commencement date of this variation, but in relation only to the sun angle provisions.

Current provisions applying to mid-sized blocks approved before the commencement date are retained. No building envelopes currently apply to compact blocks. This policy is retained in the new code except that the sun angle plane component of the building envelope will apply to compact blocks approved after the commencement date. This means that the owners of new compact blocks will have the same protection from overshadowing as mid-sized and large blocks.

On other side and rear boundaries the building envelope is defined by planes at 45 degrees from a line 3.5 metres above the boundary. In a departure from the current code, this approach does not distinguish between principal building zone and rear building zone, although this distinction remains for the purposes of boundary setbacks.

The changed policy effectively allows for additional building bulk in the rear of the block. This concession will, for many two-storey proposals, offset any possible loss of floor area under the new solar provisions.

I refer to some recent newspaper articles and advise that some of those describing blocks in Wright and Coombs were actually about the precinct codes and not draft variation 306. (Time expired.)

MR RATTENBURY (Molonglo) (10.30): I rise to speak on Mr Wall’s motion to disallow draft variation 306. When the Planning and Development Act was created in 2007 after an ACT legislation reform process, there was a staged process which involved, firstly, putting into place the legislation and territory plan framework, incorporating as many relevant existing codes and guidelines as possible, and then beginning the process of reviewing the policy or codes for the various zoning types. This staged process was to attempt to make the reform process policy neutral, and thus the code reviews became the pointy end of the reform process and have been ongoing for four years since.

The review of the community codes was the first to be completed and was finalised in 2010 as draft variation 302. The review of the residential and estate development


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