Brisbane – Dual Occupancy. Am I wasting my money?

Hi,

Currently have a DA being pushed by our town planner with BCC. Proposal is to build a primary dwelling and separate dual occupancy dwelling on a 16,100m2 block of land (property is level, clear of all trees and in an Environmentally Managed zone). We received BCC’s initial response last week – “(summarised) Likely not supported – please apply for Secondary Dwelling”. Main argument: BCC have no provision for Dual Occ within the EM (Environmentally Managed) zone.

Property Details:
– 16,100m2 of completely cleared Land (Zoning: Environmentally Managed)
– Very limited ecology to speak of (presented BCC an ecology report to support this) and all neighbours have horse paddocks everywhere.

Upon receiving the BCC response, our town planner acknowledged we may have a fight on our hands, but indicated the BCC response was flawed as the Planning Act 2016 states development assessment should be considered against the Code (regardless if development was envisaged or not) – he believes there has been substantial personal interpretation of the code by the city council.

We have drafted a response clearly stating how our application meets every point within the City Plan 2014 code, and where there was possible grey area showed how the code was met to the identical extent as their suggested “secondary dwelling”.

Do pple think this is a win-able fight? If there is more than a 50% chance, worst case scenario we are prepared to engage lawyers (cost??) and set a precedence for this type of application.

• This topic was modified 5 years, 6 months ago by  Wayne.