AN Inglewood couple has collected more than 200 signatures opposing their suburb becoming part of Bayswater in council mergers.

After whipping up community support, Lorene and Brian Clohesy will hold an anti-merger rally at Bob Daniels Community Centre on Saturday.

The couple live at the corner of Carrington and Kennedy Streets—just on the Stirling border—and want to stay in Stirling because of its heritage protection zone and its stance against multiple dwellings in suburbia coded under R60.

“We all thought our area was zoned R40 and had no idea the Barnett government bundled through R60 zoning in the metro area last year,” Mr Clohesy says.

• Deborah Chinnery, Graham Pow, Vita Thystrup, Brian Clohesy, Lorene Clohesy and Margaret Thompson. Photo by Matthew Dwyer

“This stealthy plan was designed to infill along main routes and train lines, but now it’s even affecting quiet suburban streets.

“Stirling are making a stand and are trying to amend their town planning scheme to stop the government infilling our suburbs.”

The Clohesys are also protesting the moves of a developer who’s knocking down a 1940s cottage across the road from their house and building a two-storey building in its place.

The development site is flanked by homes built between 1912 and 1936: “It would be very unlikely that this property would be in jeopardy if it was in Menora or Inglewood, in Stirling’s HPA.”

The application will go before a local development assessment panel next month. Speakers at the rally on Saturday will include representatives from the Mt Lawley Society and Stirling councillor Terry Tyzack.

It will start at 11.30am.

by STEPHEN POLLOCK