The thick plottens
It's never simple, is it. After a day of telephone calls, messages and returned calls the situation regarding Lot 31 North Boambee Road may be clearer, or may not, depending on your point of view.
The estate agent knows the person who took aerial photographs in 1994 that formed the basis of the Local Environment Plan (or 'LEP', collated in March 2000 and published in May 2000 - remember those dates!) that delineated the zoning boundaries locally and thus marked the 7A zoning boundary on our plot. It is interesting for two reasons: firstly the Council was working from photographs that were already 6 years old by the time they compiled the LEP. Secondly, the photos from 1994 show that the area within the 7A boundary was covered with eucalyptus trees and was therefore legitimately designated as protected koala habitat. But the same photographer took aerial shots in June 2000 - just a month after the LEP was published - that show the area to have been partially cleared. This suggests that Council have within their possession photographs that clearly show that at or near the time when the LEP was published the zoning of Lot 31 was inaccurate. John Simpson, the estate agent, regards this as useful evidence to put before Council, with the addendum that it's really what the Rural Fire Service (RFS) thinks about things that makes a difference, suggesting that if the RFS agrees that the land clearly isn't koala habitat then the 100m bushfire buffer zone may not apply - and that this would carry a lot of weight with Council.
There's more: John got a call back from the owners who have rather quickly (and mysteriously?) managed to arrange a meeting with the Council tomorrow afternoon to try and bash out the issues on the basis that in 2001 they wrote to the Council to ask for permission to build a house within what is zoned 7A and were given written permission to do so. Now our estate agent was extremely tactful, but even he thought that it might have been useful to have a copy of that correspondence...
It seems that all is not yet lost on the zoning front. If it can be established that the Council and the RFS agree that the zoning has always been inaccurate and the RFS can somehow cast the vote on not/being able to build within the erroneous 7A zone then that issue may just go away without having to go for a full re-zoning appeal at State level, thus saving time, money and probably a lot of stress!
That leaves us with the problem of soil testing, and IF we end up in a situation where the zoning problem has gone away I think we are going to make a case for passing the costs of the soil testing on to the vendors. So any purchase of the land will be contingent on three things: resolving in writing (!) the issues about zoning, getting an all-clear on possible soil contamination, and tidying up the legal loose ends regarding Right of Carriageway on the property, with the help of the surveyor who did the original survey back in 2000/2001. Then, and only then, are we likely to purchase the plot.
The estate agent knows the person who took aerial photographs in 1994 that formed the basis of the Local Environment Plan (or 'LEP', collated in March 2000 and published in May 2000 - remember those dates!) that delineated the zoning boundaries locally and thus marked the 7A zoning boundary on our plot. It is interesting for two reasons: firstly the Council was working from photographs that were already 6 years old by the time they compiled the LEP. Secondly, the photos from 1994 show that the area within the 7A boundary was covered with eucalyptus trees and was therefore legitimately designated as protected koala habitat. But the same photographer took aerial shots in June 2000 - just a month after the LEP was published - that show the area to have been partially cleared. This suggests that Council have within their possession photographs that clearly show that at or near the time when the LEP was published the zoning of Lot 31 was inaccurate. John Simpson, the estate agent, regards this as useful evidence to put before Council, with the addendum that it's really what the Rural Fire Service (RFS) thinks about things that makes a difference, suggesting that if the RFS agrees that the land clearly isn't koala habitat then the 100m bushfire buffer zone may not apply - and that this would carry a lot of weight with Council.
There's more: John got a call back from the owners who have rather quickly (and mysteriously?) managed to arrange a meeting with the Council tomorrow afternoon to try and bash out the issues on the basis that in 2001 they wrote to the Council to ask for permission to build a house within what is zoned 7A and were given written permission to do so. Now our estate agent was extremely tactful, but even he thought that it might have been useful to have a copy of that correspondence...
It seems that all is not yet lost on the zoning front. If it can be established that the Council and the RFS agree that the zoning has always been inaccurate and the RFS can somehow cast the vote on not/being able to build within the erroneous 7A zone then that issue may just go away without having to go for a full re-zoning appeal at State level, thus saving time, money and probably a lot of stress!
That leaves us with the problem of soil testing, and IF we end up in a situation where the zoning problem has gone away I think we are going to make a case for passing the costs of the soil testing on to the vendors. So any purchase of the land will be contingent on three things: resolving in writing (!) the issues about zoning, getting an all-clear on possible soil contamination, and tidying up the legal loose ends regarding Right of Carriageway on the property, with the help of the surveyor who did the original survey back in 2000/2001. Then, and only then, are we likely to purchase the plot.
posted by Sara Bowen at 7:21 am
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