SEVERAL residents who live at the Port Macquarie canals have voiced their concern over additional dwellings on land, and they say council has ignored them.
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Peter Cordell and his wife Sharon live on Newport Crescent in a house on a subdivided block.
The couple argue that an additional dwelling, which is being built at the front of the house next door to them will prevent them from servicing their property and contribute to overcrowding in the area.
“I put a flyer out because no one knew this was going ahead except for ourselves and two other properties,” Ms Cordell said.
About 40 residents approached council in October, 2015 with a number of concerns including the approval of extra dwellings being built on land, issues with sewerage, parking and access to the road.
“Each one of these objections were dismissed one by one,” Ms Cordell said.
Port Macquarie-Hastings Council director Matt Rogers said the matter was considered by Council’s Development Assessment Panel in October 2015 and was deemed to satisfactorily address these planning controls.
“Council’s planning controls include provisions relating to building height, density, parking, open space and servicing to guide the design of these redevelopments and manage impacts”, he said.
In addition, council concluded that road and servicing infrastructure is capable of supporting additional density in the area and additional street parking is not required.
Ms Cordell believes the council dismissed their concerns because they are under pressure from the state government to provide more housing to accommodate a larger population.
“What’s going to happen when you have double the amount of people living here? How is the overflow going to work? How is the sewerage going to cope?” she said.
The couple do not know how they will be able to service their house and clean their gutters as the dwelling has been built close to their boundary, under their roof.
“I don’t care what it looks like on paper, someone from the council needs to come out here and actually see what they’ve approved and explain to me how I’m suppose to be able to service that side of my house, make any amendments and clean my gutters,” Ms Cordell said.
“I can assure you that when we purchased this property, no one mentioned to us that there was any possibility that this could happen.”
Mr Rogers said multi-dwelling housing, dual occupancies and secondary dwellings are permitted, with council consent, on residentially zoned land within the canal estates.
“With the limited availability of waterfront land and rising land values, council is seeing more of the older housing being renovated or demolished to provide for multi-housing developments in the area,” he said.
Tony Byatt also lives on Newport Crescent. He was one of the first to move to the location.
“There was nothing here when I came. I bought the land in 1987 and I built the house in 1988,” he said.
“There are seven units on three blocks of land already and now they say we can have granny flats.”
“I came here because there weren’t that many people who were able to live in this area,” he said,
“Now that has already doubled,” he said.
Mr Byatt said it didn’t matter what the residents told council, as they were assured it was all legal.
Steven Ringe, another resident said the move by council to approve the dwelling had already been decided without taking on the views of residents.
“The council really doesn’t know how to react to the public,” he said.