More Media on Ku-ring-gai's Housing Strategy

In an effort to keep you posted on some of the several messages about the Housing Strategy being circulated around the Ku-ring-gai community following the Council’s decision last Tuesday 22nd, we are providing you with messages from Rob Stokes, NSW Planning Minister, our State MPs, Jonathan O’Dea (Davidson) and Alister Henskens (Ku-ring-gai) and an article in today’s Sydney Morning Herald. We hope you find them informative and interesting reading!

Planning Minister Stokes’ Press Release 23 September 2020

Jonathan O’Dea’s Letter to Mayor 28 September 2020

Alister Henskens’ Message to Electorate 25 September 2020

Alister Henskens Letter to Mayor 29 September 2020

Sydney Morning Herald Article 30 September 2020

We welcome the strong support for our community by our State MPs. Thank you Jonathan and Alister.

As always, we welcome your comments to info@supportlindfield.net .

Unanimous Support to Overhaul Housing Strategy

There is now unanimous support among Ku-ring-gai Councillors to reject the draft Housing Strategy prepared by Council staff and consultants. This follows an overwhelming response from residents to Support Lindfield’s community campaign, our two State MPs (The Hon. Jonathan O’Dea MP and Mr Alister Henskens SC MP) publicly speaking out against the draft Housing Strategy, and correspondence from the Minister for Planning and Public Spaces (The Hon. Rob Stokes MP) confirming that Council has ultimate responsibility for deciding dwelling targets.

All Sydney metropolitan councils are required to have a housing strategy. Ku-ring-gai Council’s draft Housing Strategy currently provides for 10,660 new dwellings up to 2036 and proposes apartment buildings of up to 15 storeys in Lindfield, Turramurra and St Ives and 20 storeys plus in Gordon. The public exhibition period for the draft Housing Strategy coincided with the COVID-19 shutdown and only 253 submissions were received by Council. However, in the lead up to the Council meeting on 22 September, over 1,000 emails were sent by residents to Councillors asking them to reject the draft Housing Strategy.

At the Council meeting, Ku-ring-gai Mayor, Jennifer Anderson (Roseville Ward) proposed a resolution that would authorise Council staff, without any involvement or oversight from Councillors or the community, to amend the draft Housing Strategy “to reflect provision of new dwellings to 2036 from capacity within current planning instruments”, make other consequential amendments and lodge the Housing Strategy with the State Government. This was based on new dwelling numbers being substantially reduced, thereby negating the need for building heights above what is currently permitted. It would effectively result in there being no real strategy for future housing in Ku-ring-gai. We understand some Councillors received the 41⁄2 page Mayoral Minute containing the resolution about an hour before the meeting, hardly enough time to make an informed decision.

Deputy Mayor Spencer (Wahroonga Ward) and Crs Ngai (Roseville Ward), Kelly (Gordon Ward), Kay (St Ives) and Pettett (Comenarra Ward) put an amendment to the Mayor’s proposed resolution. They said good governance required that Councillors must see the revised Housing Strategy before adopting it, given the extent of amendments that would be required to the lengthy document (150 pages plus about 450 pages of annexures). They also want the community to have an opportunity to provide feedback on the revised Housing Strategy.

Councillors Szatow (Gordon Ward), Smith (St Ives Ward), Greenfield (Wahroonga Ward) and Clarke (Comenarra Ward) voted with the Mayor in rejecting the amendment and supporting the Mayor’s proposed resolution to adopt the Housing Strategy before it has even been prepared. The Mayor used her casting vote to pass the resolution.

Support Lindfield President, Linda McDonald said “This demonstrates a complete failure of due process and proper governance and has effectively sought to close the door on public scrutiny. While the community will no doubt welcome the proposal to reduce dwelling numbers and abandon heights above existing limits, in the absence of transparency around the changes, there is no guarantee the new Housing Strategy will accord with community expectations.” Mr Henskens SC MP raised similar concerns in a statement issued on 25 September, which can be found here.

Later in the meeting, Deputy Mayor Spencer and Crs Ngai, Kelly, Kay and Pettett lodged a motion to rescind (overturn) the Mayor’s resolution. The effect of this is to put a hold on the implementation of the Mayor’s resolution until Council decides the rescission motion (likely at the October Council meeting). According to a statement made by Cr Ngai after the meeting, the Councillors lodged the rescission motion because the Mayor’s resolution was “not in line with...good governance and informed decision making...”.

In a press release issued after the meeting, Council provided an incomplete and misleading account of what transpired at the meeting, quoting the Mayor as saying she was “at a loss to understand” why the Councillors who lodged the rescission motion are “intent on denying residents unequivocal rejection of the Greater Sydney Commission housing targets...”. This misrepresented the position taken by those Councillors, whose objection to the Mayor’s resolution did not relate to the proposed reduction in dwelling numbers. The press release, which has been widely circulated, has resulted in considerable confusion in the community.

Whatever the outcome in October, it is clear the draft Housing Strategy will need to be completely overhauled. Councillor Clarke indicated at the Council meeting that the now defunct draft Housing Strategy has already cost ratepayers about $2 million. Support Lindfield understands there is no immediate urgency to adopt a housing strategy. According to Council, only one of the 27 Sydney metropolitan councils has to date lodged a housing strategy with the State Government.

Council should use the next month to come up with a process for preparing a considered and sensible new draft Housing Strategy based on reduced dwelling targets that accords with community needs and expectations and involves proper community consultation. For more information go to supportlindfield.net or email info@supportlindfield.net.

NSW Government responds to Ku-ring-gai Council's targets

The NSW Planning Minister has confirmed that new dwelling targets in Ku-ring-gai Council’s Housing Strategy are not required by the State Government, despite claims to the contrary by Ku-ring-gai Mayor, Jennifer Anderson.

To accommodate the thousands of new dwellings required to meet the targets, the proposed Housing Strategy provides for residential towers of up to 15 storeys in Lindfield, Turramurra and St Ives and 20 storeys plus in Gordon.

The Planning Minister has stated that Council is responsible for deciding new dwelling numbers and that our State MPs were correct to identify that the target "is not a legal requirement upon Council by the Government". He also stated that "Council should carefully consider whether the housing target...accords with the expectations of the community…” and that also relevant “...is the increase in local housing dwelling numbers that have taken place in the last decade and the demands they have made on local infrastructure”. For further information and a complete copy of the Minister’s letter to Mayor Anderson, please click here.

Please Take Action to tell Councillors what you think. It’s two clicks and two minutes to save our suburbs from high rise towers.

Ku-ring-gai Housing Strategy - Support Lindfield's Response

Dear Residents

 Ku-ring-gai DRAFT HOUSING STRATEGY – SUPPORT LINDFIELD SURVEY

You may recall Support Lindfield recently undertook a survey about the Ku-ring-gai Draft Housing Strategy.  Indeed, you may have responded to it and if you did, thank you for doing so.

While our main focus is on the Lindfield Village Hub, we got involved with the Housing Strategy as we had concerns that it would affect the Hub project, and building height in particular. The highlights of the survey results are:

·     Distribution was targeted to Lindfield, Roseville and Killara residents and focused on the Housing Strategy scenarios of the Lindfield town centre

·     253 respondents – Council’s survey attracted the same number from all of Ku-ring-gai.

·     Long term residents dominated the responses

·     The 4th scenario that SupportLindfield presented had a 62% first choice rating

·     Support Lindfield’s scenario is greater housing diversity and more gentle density increase across Lindfield and neighbouring suburbs with maximum 7 storey buildings concentrated around the station.

The slide pack with the full report is at this link.

REPORT TO COUNCIL MEETING ON TUESDAY 28TH

Councillors will be voting on the Officers’ recommendations for the Draft Housing Strategy this coming Tuesday.  The agenda item GB3 and report is at this link if you’re interested in reading it. Item GB4 deals with the implementation plan if GB3 is approved as per the Officers’ recommendations.

Support Lindfield has serious concerns about the new housing targets that underpin the Housing Strategy.  And we consider, along with many others, that the community consultation was totally inadequate.  Three of our committee members submitted video clips with our results and concerns to all Councillors and recommended that they not approve the Officers’ recommendations.  The video clips are 3 minutes each and are in order. Click on the names below.

 1. Andrew Sweeney

2. Richard Vowell

3. Rachel Watts

The proposed resolution is at this link.  You can watch the live streamed Council meeting on Tuesday 28th at 7.00pm at this link.

This is a lot of information to take in.  However, the future of our lovely suburbs is at stake and we have tried to bring the shortcomings of the Council’s process to the attention of the community and let you have a say.

As always, we’re happy to hear from you at info@supportlindfield.net.  And please ask your local friends and neighbours to sign up to our database on our website at https://supportlindfield.net/take-action

Regards,

The Support Lindfield Team

 

 

What’s New with the Lindfield Community Hub Project?


Dear Resident,
In order to keep you and our community, up to date with the Hub project, here are recent activities of Support Lindfield and the Council around the project. There has been some activity!

1. Support Lindfield’s letter to Councillors and Councillor Ngai’s response
On 25 May we wrote to all Councillors as we had major concerns about the apparent lack of progress by Council Officers following the closure of the Request for Tender process on 3 April. We had asked a senior Council Officer when the successful tenderer would be announced, and the response was that there was “no date to report to Council”. As we believed this was not an acceptable response, we wrote to all Councillors requesting a response from each one of them. The letter is at this link. It is long on purpose as we wanted to remind Councillors of the facts of the history of the project and the delays since its inception in 2012. About two weeks later (after thundering silence) we sent a reminder that we were awaiting a response.

The only written response we received was from Councillor Sam Ngai who is one of our two Roseville Ward Councillors. The Mayor, Jennifer Anderson, who is our other Ward Councillor did not acknowledge nor respond to our letter. Councillors Cedric Spencer (Wahroonga) and Peter Kelly (Gordon), acknowledged our letter. Councillor Ngai’s response is at this link. We thank Cr. Ngai for his response and for his continuing work on behalf of the community.

2. Council Officers’ report to Council meeting on 30 June
On 17 June a report was posted on the Council website headed Lindfield Village Hub Tender Update. That report was tabled at the Council meeting Tuesday 30 June. Councillors voted unanimously to approve the report. The recommendation from the Council Officers was that:
- Council decline to accept any tenders received. (There were two tenders, one from Fabcot (Woolworths) and the other from Aqualand.)
- Delegate authority to the General Manager to enter into negotiations with any possible providers (including Fabcot and Aqualand) over no more than a three month period and report the outcomes of those negotiations to Council by no later than October 2020.
The full report is at this link.

3. Support Lindfield meeting with General Manager and other senior Council Officers
In the meantime, we requested a meeting with Council’s General Manager, John McKee, in an effort to get some information about the project. Since Council prevented the developers from communicating with the community, we have been unable to get information from either them or Council for some time. Even submitting GIPA (Freedom of Information) requests result in being denied information we believe should be available to the community and we have to pursue those through the State Government which is a slow process.

On 23 June, four of our Committee members had a meeting with John McKee, General Manager; Geoff Douglas, Head of Major Projects; David Marshall, Director Corporate and Virginia Leafe, Manager Communications. We had a constructive and open discussion around topics and questions we had submitted beforehand. The General Manager agreed to deal with one our concerns around the lack of transparency with the community. We will report his response in a future update.

4. Our reach in the community soars to 10,000!
We now have an estimated reach of 10,000 individuals in the Roseville Ward. The population of the Ward is around 25,000 so our reach represents about 40%. We think that’s pretty good but of course we would like to have direct communication with many more residents.

We depend on you in the community to spread the word to your neighbours and local friends in Roseville, Lindfield, Killara and other suburbs further north . Please pass this message on to them. And if you received this message from someone else please go to this page https://supportlindfield.net/take-action and sign up as a member (you can pay $15 on line at the same time) or a supporter. The more contacts we have the stronger we are and the louder our voice is.

We also have a Facebook page at Facebook.com/supportlindfield . So if you are a Facebook user please spread the word using that medium too.

We will bring you further news as we have it. One day we may have a new Hub!! We welcome your comments and feedback to info@supportlindfield.net .

Regards,
The Support Lindfield Team
Working for our Community

Ku-Ring-Gai Draft Housing Strategy

Just a reminder if you have not yet completed our survey, please read on and complete it. Please see note at the bottom re using a mouse.

In our email of 3 May, we told you about Ku-ring-gai Council’s Draft Housing Strategy, which was on public exhibition from 26 March 2020 to 8 May 2020. We mentioned that we would be running a survey to get community views on the form and location of new dwellings in Lindfield and surrounding suburbs. A link to the survey is here and at the bottom of this message. But please watch the video (next paragraph) first. (If you prefer to read rather than listen, go the link at the bottom of this message and click on the script link.)

Support Lindfield video
Before you start the survey, we recommend that you watch this video we have prepared that provides some background information about Council’s Draft Housing Strategy.

The Draft Housing Strategy documents
You can find the draft Housing Strategy documents at this link. Much of the important detail is contained in the Technical Document and its Appendices. 

Some key information about the Draft Housing Strategy 
The Draft Housing Strategy is premised on there being a need for an additional 10,660 new dwellings across Ku-ring-gai in the period 2016 to 2036. Council has allocated 1,600 of the new dwellings to Lindfield. The Strategy does not take into account the COVID-19 pandemic, which is likely to have a significant impact on population growth in Sydney, at least in the short-term. 

The Support Lindfield Committee is not satisfied that there is in fact a requirement for Council to deliver the number of new dwellings proposed in the Draft Housing Strategy and we question the appropriateness of the density and height of development proposed.  However, we appreciate that Council is required to have a strategy for housing and that it will likely need to deliver some new dwellings between now and 2036. 

The Draft Housing Strategy identifies four relatively small geographical areas for new housing - within an 800m radius of the train stations in Lindfield, Gordon and Turramurra and within 800m of the St Ives centre. It contemplates apartment buildings of up to 15 storeys in Lindfield, Turramurra and St Ives and 20 storeys in Gordon. 

We want the community to have a say
We know that many of you will have views on the height, form and location of new housing in Ku-ring-gai and we therefore feel that it is important to bring the Draft Housing Strategy to your attention so you can have your say. 

Council officers refused to extend the public exhibition period, despite it directly coinciding with the COVID-19 shutdown and several requests (including from some Councillors). This is extremely disappointing in circumstances where the State Government was amenable to an extension and given there are community members who would like to provide input but missed the deadline. 

Although the deadline for submissions has passed, we still think it’s worth making the views of the community known and we propose to do that by delivering a report on our survey results to Council. Our survey focuses on Lindfield, Killara and Roseville. If you would like to provide input on the Draft Housing Strategy more broadly, we suggest that you email Councillors directly with your views. Councillors@kmc.nsw.gov.au will reach all 10 Councillors.

The survey
To complete the survey click on this link. Please note that you will require a mouse to complete two questions so it is not possible to complete the whole survey on an IPad or IPhone.

The more respondents we have, the more useful the survey results will be. You can help by encouraging at least 5 others to complete the survey - neighbours, friends, family, colleagues etc - preferably people who live in the local area. 

Thank you very much for your support. Please contact us at info@supportlindfield.net with any comments or questions. 

Regards,

The Support Lindfield team

For a full transcript of the video, please download the PDF.

Coles Lindfield Redevelopment

Coles Redevelopment - View from corner of Pacific Highway and Balfour St

Coles Lindfield is currently located on the corner of the Pacific Highway and 1 Balfour Street Lindfield. In May 2018 they appealed their development application in order to take it to the Sydney North Planning Panel. In August 2019 their appeal was determined to be successful, and so the development will go ahead. We wanted to capture the summary of the information for the residents of Lindfield.

The development will commence in 2 phases. The first phase will see the construction of a new Balfour Lane adjacent to the school boundary in order to guarantee access to the Holy Family School and Church. The second phase will involve the demolition of the Coles site, carpark and old Balfour Lane, with the exception of a heritage building and electrical substation. This will create a large construction area for the new development.

The new development will contain double the number of carpark spaces, 249 retail parking spaces over 2 levels and 73 residential parking spaces. The new supermarket will also be approximately double the size of the current store; ~4500m2 in total floor area, retaining Liqourland and adding a cafe. The development will also include 70 new (very small) apartments above the supermarket.

Balfour Lane view of Coles redevelopment

The building height is roughly 5-6 stories plus rooftop plant, which is below the height of the Village Hub proposal. There will be two carpark entrances, one roughly at the original Balfour Lane location into LG2 and one on the western boundary (access road built in phase 1 as mentioned) that connects to LG1.

There is currently no start date for construction that we are aware of, although we hope it doesn’t clash with the Village Green and Hub construction dates as that would make parking and access to supermarkets very difficult in Lindfield.

KRG HOUSING STRATEGY & THE LINDFIELD VILLAGE HUB - WHAT’S THE CONNECTION?

WHY IS SUPPORT LINDFIELD GETTING INVOLVED?
Ku-ring-gai Council has developed a Draft Ku-ring-gai Housing Strategy (as have all other Sydney Councils as part of the State Government’s strategic directions) that seeks to cater for the foreseen increase in population density through to 2036.  Public submissions and comments on the Draft close this Friday 8th May with so far, no extension of the public exhibition period despite the entire period having coincided with the Covid lockdown.

It calls for an additional 1600 dwellings in Lindfield over the next 15 years and sets out three scenarios. As part of catering for Sydney’s growth it seeks to increase the dwelling density within 800m of Lindfield Station.  

The Housing Strategy purports to provide the right mix of dwelling types - low, medium and high intensity/density - to meet the needs of the community into the future and the extent of the suburb that will be consumed. The Draft includes low, medium and high intensity/density development options for Lindfield, the difference being the dwelling forms and extent of the suburb that is consumed. Unfortunately, the information is not well presented or explained, and it is difficult for non-planners (i.e. the community) to understand and assess the outcomes and impacts of the three options.  All scenarios impact on the character of the suburb and others will remove the existing housing character.

Two of the three scenarios provided in the Housing Strategy contemplate building heights of 10 to 15 storeys. One of these appears to show this height limit on the Lindfield Village Hub site. Support Lindfield is concerned that this could give Council a basis for seeking to further increase the maximum building height of the Hub in the future, despite Council’s resolution on 20 August 2019 to limit the Hub to 9 storeys. 

Support Lindfield has therefore taken some time to look at the strategy and we think you will be interested in it too – both in terms of the Hub but also more broadly given the implications for our local area. With newfound technology capability we have put together a short presentation that explains some of our ideas to look more broadly than what is in the Draft. Click here to watch.

We intend to lodge an initial submission and follow up with a more detailed one to Councillors (your elected representatives) based on an online community survey that we intend to run over the next month.

You can find the Housing Strategy documents at this link on the council website.

For a quick look at the three scenarios in the Strategy, go to Councillor Sam Ngai’s Facebook page at this link. 

HOW CAN YOU HELP?
Consider telling the Council you are interested, and will contribute to Support Lindfield’s community survey, by going to this Council website page

Click the green comment button and say something like –“We wish to participate in the planning of our suburb and will contribute via Support Lindfield’s survey.  We request the extension of the closing date for submissions for at least 4 weeks beyond 8 May due to the lockdown restrictions.”

Of course, feel free to say more (up to 300 words) or better still write a submission and upload it to the same website page.

Thanks for your interest and help. As usual you can contact us at info@supportlindfield.net with any comments or questions. 
 
Regards,
 
The Support Lindfield Team