By NOEL MURPHY
SURF Coast council will tell an independent panel considering growth options for Torquay that its stance against housing west of Duffields Road remains unchanged – for the moment.
Councillors this week voted unanimously to restate in a submission to the panel their predecessors’ 2011 decision against residential development of Spring Creek.
The panel is investigating submissions on a proposed C66 planning scheme amendment to guide Torquay’s growth. The panel will make recommendations to council, which must either accept them and send the amendment to the Planning Minister for approval or explain why it rejected the recommendations.
Restating the previous council’s opposition to expanding Torquay’s housing further west effectively leaves the new council free to consider the panel’s findings without the potential conflicts of a formal submission and stance on Spring Creek.
Cr Heather Wellington said the new council had to see the recommendations before it could make a decision.
“We haven’t actually been formally asked to comment on C66, so we shouldn’t comment until we know what the question is,” Cr Heather Wellington told the Independent.
“Until council decides otherwise, the position of council is as previously decided. We’d have to go through a proper process to change or affirm it.
“A new council has been voted in since that 2011 decision. We haven’t been through the same process and I want to be able to consider the panel’s recommendations and reasoning with an open mind.”
Cr Eve Fisher said this week’s council vote was “more that we wanted to stick with keeping zoning the same”.
“The wording was so we didn’t mislead people to think we made the 2011 decision. We reiterated that the council hasn’t changed since 2011.”
Deputy mayor Rod Nockles said the vote made “quite a significant distinction”, signalling to the public that the question of rezoning land west of Duffields Rd was “live’”.
“As a new councillor, I’m certainly not prepared to say this is the position of this council,” he said.
“There are six new councillors. There’s no way I’d be bound by a previous determination – I want to weigh up the panel findings.
“I reserve the position to examine matters in due course and weigh up the evidence.”
Mayor Libby Coker did not return the Independent’s call for comment.
