Many regional areas are in danger of being ‘developed to death’ as people move from major cities, seeking a Tree or Sea Change. From coastal areas like the Bellarine Peninsula to the Otways, to valley towns in north eastern Victoria, people are flocking to regional centres close to attractive places. The covid lockdowns allowed many people to transition to online work, which has further driven the trend towards relocating in regional areas. This is, of course, causing many problems as farmland and remnant vegetation is swallowed up (usually by low density sprawl), with growing demands for water supplies and waste treatment, and growing impacts on local community services like healthcare and schools.

This is playing out in many areas, including Bright in north eastern Victoria.

There is a subdivision and development plan that is currently being considered by the Alpine Council which has been submitted by a Melbourne development company (Deague Group) called the Bright Valley Development. The development will fill in a large open area on the right entry point to the town when driving from Myrtleford. Initially concerns focused on the fact that some of the significant ‘gateway trees’ at the entry to town would need to be cut down. But there are also deeper concerns about whether it would represent overdevelopment of the town. Many residents of Bright say this development, if allowed to proceed, will change the character of the township and the iconic entrance gateway forever.

In a statement by local residents, Leanne Boyd speaking for the group says:

‘Residents of Bright feel let down by the Council not putting in place the appropriate planning controls and checks and balances including social and physical infrastructure that would support the community.

Instead, there are more loose ends that have not been properly considered which will result in substantial costs being borne by the local community.

This is unfair and unreasonable.

The development plan lacks the level of detail to give confidence in both the developer and what will be built and how the community will be better served as a result of this development proposal being approved.

As residents, we don’t know how Council got into this mess’.

big treeBeing in the upper Ovens valley, the land available for development along the corridor from Porepunkah to Harrietville is limited. Farming remains a significant land use in sections of the lower valley between the towns, although much of that land is slowly being converted to large acre house blocks. This development will fill in a significant area of current green space on the outskirt of the town. The residents group has gone on to express concerns about the planning process that has allowed this proposal to be considered. They say:

There is something particularly strange about the rezoning of this land. In 2015 a Planning Panel made a recommendation to support a rezoning of this land from a Rural Zone into the General Residential Zone on the outskirts of town.

The original Residential Land Review commissioned by Council in 2005 intended for the site to be part General Residential Zone and part Low Density Residential Zone to accommodate up to 152 lots. Instead, what got approved left off the low-density zoning and allowed up to 386 lots – more than double what was originally envisioned in the Council study.

Everything went downhill from there.

The concerns raised by the residents about possible impacts by the residents include:

  • Insufficient consideration of bushfire risk
  • Insufficient consideration of effluent disposal treatment
  • No assessment has been done of possible site contamination. This is important given that the land was historically used for a tobacco farm – only limited soil testing has been done, noting that it did not test the suitability of the soil for sensitive uses such as potential childcare etc. and the report done suggested a condition that the site was not suitable for keeping free-range chickens in people’s backyards
  • There is no clear understanding of the number of Pin Oak and Elm trees that will need to be removed
  • No contributions plan has been proposed. Such a plan is a normal requirement for rezoning, subdivision and development proposals of this type – while Alpine Shire do not currently utilise Development Contribution Plans and Overlays, we note that contributions are commonly levied by way of conditions on planning permits and through section 173 agreements in other Councils.

What next with this proposal?

The residents group says:

To the residents and wider community, this subdivision and development proposal falls well short of achieving the best possible planning outcome and that’s why the residents of Bright and the surrounding areas feel let down by the Council and the developer.

We need to plan our township properly and make sure that all of the necessary social and physical infrastructure and potential impacts that proposals like these can be adequately addressed. That has not been done here.

The residents will be calling on the Planning Minister to intervene and get this proposal back on track.

The Council and the developer need to sit down with the community and work through the problems of this proposal for a better outcome for Bright and the wider community.