The State government has invited the Council to propose improvements to the Planning and Design Code that would provide more detail on the sorts of development that is desired and not desired, as well as more protection of the buildings that create our streetscape character.
The Council took up the invitation at its meeting of the 22 January 2024. You can read the detail in the Council’s agenda (item 11.2).
Previous State governments have successively taken over more and more planning powers, culminating in the Planning and Design Code, which tends to take a cookie cutter approach to the character of our streets. This caused a lot of unhappiness with local councils and residents, who often saw their own far more sophisticated and nuanced plans lost. The jettisoned plans were typically based on lots of local surveys and other research. For example, the Residential Character (Norwood) Zone in the old Development Plan occupied ten pages, with a map, an explanation of the desired local character, principles of control, specific numerical controls, and diagrams like the one below.
In addition there were five “Policy Areas” with more specific controls for that area. Fortunately the old Development Plan is still available on a State Government website, so you can see how it looks and can compare it with the Planning and Design Code.
As well as the herculean effort to come up with Area Statements that could be applied in many localities across the State, the Planning and Design Code also tries to make these fit with its various other controls, the provisions for each zone and “overlay”, as well as the so-called Technical and Numerical Variations that normally control what can and can’t be built.
Needless to say, the State planners have often failed, with far less detail and explanation and with many inconsistencies between the zones, overlays and the Technical and Numerical Variations.
The government has been told again and again about these problems, and it appeared that it has listened. The Chair of the State Planning Commission, Craig Holden, has written to Mayor Robert Briar inviting the Council to update the Historic Area and Character Statements, at one stage referring to “their” (i.e. the Council’s) statements. The Council has been invited to elaborate more on local character areas, reflecting differences from one street to another.
While the existing confusing format of the Code will be retained, Councils can include some of the key measurements in the Character Statements. And it can be specific about the sorts of additions that can be allowed. Here is an example of what might be possible in an area with old single storey houses: “Predominantly single storey, with two storey additions within the roof space to the rear of buildings.” Images of the sort of things the planners have in mind, which featured in our old Development Plan, will be brought back.
Protection for “Representative Buildings”
Another welcome aspect of the new government approach is that it has invited Council to nominate more buildings that should be subject to demolition controls. But it is limited to certain areas of Norwood.
Under the old Development Plan, Norwood’s old buildings were not as protected as those of neighbouring suburbs. These were referred to as “Contributory Items” in the old regime, and a lot of the lobbying in the change to the Planning and Design Code was to ensure that these Contributory Items had the same protection in the new regime. The problem for Norwood (and Kent Town) is that the old Development Plan had very few Contributory Items nominated, despite surveys that identified these.
The following image following is from the SA Property and Planning Atlas, with Norwood outlined in green. The zones in light blue are Historic Areas, where there is some demolition control. The pink areas are “Character Areas”. There is no specific demolition control for the Character Areas. The red dots are Representative Buildings, where demolition would need approval.
You can see that there is a lot of Norwood that is not part of an Historic Area. Don’t you think that there would be Representative Buildings, where demolition should need to be approved by Council, in the rest of Norwood?
The proposal to initiate a Code Amendment specifically excludes expanding the boundaries of the Historic Areas and Character Areas. Council has been invited to nominate more Representative Buildings within the Historic and Character Areas, but that still leaves many parts of Norwood likely to have buildings that in other suburbs would be protected.
Norwood Residents Association 