Perth Voice Interactive

THE Mt Lawley Society has raised the alarm over plans to strip guidelines designed to protect Beaufort Street’s character from the city’s planning scheme.

Stirling council is currently reviewing the scheme, and under a WA Planning Commission mantra of standardisation and simplification, proposes to reduce the number of local development plans from 38 down to just seven; Beaufort isn’t among those to survive the cut.

That’s got Society president Phil Matson and his members concerned.

“The Beaufort Street Local Development Plan was designed to reduce planning uncertainty in this long corridor, and everyone really welcomed its guidance to development, because it wasn’t blocking development,” Mr Matson told the Voice.

“It was an award-winning document that was popular with the City of Stirling, property owners and local businesses.

“It’s goal was that ‘Beaufort Street will be vibrant while protecting the integrity of adjacent neighbourhoods by ensuring that… built form outcomes of individual developments are consistent with the surroundings and preserve Beaufort Street’s distinctiveness and special sense of place’.

“It has been successful.”

Mr Matson said the City had been up-front about the changes it proposed and engaged appropriately with the Society and the community, but they still fear the changes could see the end of height limits along Beaufort, while opening up side streets for unsympathetic development.

“…the City of Stirling website confirms that the local centre at 24 Coode Street (the old Coode St cafe), Mt Lawley, in a residential area, will be able to have up to three to six storeys,” Mr Matson said.

While the City’s consultation papers say “the heritage protection of the area will be retained under the draft LPS4, Mr Matson said the Society hadn’t been able to get specific details on how that would be achieved.

“The City has said ‘we will be doing this while we are progressing with LPS4’, but that leaves a gross uncertainty we would like to see addressed,” he said.

The Society has printed 10,000 flyers alerting residents to its concerns, and volunteers are pounding the streets getting them into letterboxes.

“The Society has produced a campaign flyer and website (mls.org.au) urging all City of Stirling residents and businesses to lodge an objection to LPS4 and push for retention of the Beaufort Street Local Development Plan during the public consultation period which closes on January 24, 2025,” Mr Matson said.

The City of Stirling told the Voice via a media response that changes to WA’s planning system over recent year meant a simplified framework could achieve the same outcomes as the local development plans.

Engagements

“The City has, in its various engagements with the Mt Lawley Society on this issue, explained that heritage protection will not change when the new local planning scheme comes into effect,” the response said.

“Existing local planning policies aim to make sure the heritage character is retained, protected and reflected in new development – and this will not change.

“The City’s existing local planning framework will remain in place until the time that LPS4 is gazetted. 

“There will not be a ‘window’ without heritage character protections.”

The City said while removing the local development plans wasn’t a directive of the WAPC, it was in line with efforts to remove unnecessary layers of regulation and complexity – a position it supported.

“There is a significant process that must be completed before LPS4 is approved by the minister and gazetted. “A report must be considered by City of Stirling council, submissions must be considered by the Department of Planning, Lands and Heritage, and the WA Planning Commission must provide a recommendation to the minister.

by STEVE GRANT