The Dunbar Road project, a medium-density housing development of 50 dwellings in Traralgon aimed at providing affordable housing opportunities for Housing Victoria, serves as an excellent example of how Millar Merrigan’s multi-disciplinary structure allows us to collaborate across land development functions to achieve a positive outcome for communities and clients.

Dunbar Road includes a significant proportion of smaller units, aligning with the Municipal Planning Strategy (MPS), which aspires to grow Latrobe City’s population to 100,000 by 2050, with one and 2-person households expected to represent 76% of all new households over the next 15 years.

The Dunbar Road development looks to create a variety of household sizes, addressing the need for smaller, more affordable housing options in Traralgon. It’s also conveniently located near existing services and infrastructure, such as public transport, parks and shops, helping to create good homes for people.

This project also aims to include social and affordable housing, helping contribute to the Victorian Government’s strategic targets for affordable housing. At the council hearing for this project, Chris Constantine, director at Millar Merrigan, spoke on the affordability of housing that this project sought to ease.

Ultimately, in ensuring this project can feasibly run ahead with minimal restrictions, Millar Merrigan is helping to highlight the importance of affordable housing in regional areas. It also demonstrates a shift, as council and more locals come to realise it’s importance.

Overcoming obstacles

Despite facing refusal from Latrobe City Council initially, Millar Merrigan successfully appealed this decision on behalf of our client to the Victorian Civil Administrative Tribunal (VCAT) and the development ultimately received approval. The refusal was largely based on land use concerns, rather than the design of the development itself. 

It’s a testament to our collaborative design work at Millar Merrigan that the acceptability of the building and subdivision was hardly questioned as part of the hearing. The integration of building and landscape design, together with the technical input of our civil engineers and surveyors – all under one roof – resulted in a design solution that was both appropriate for the site and surroundings and robust enough to withstand extensive scrutiny.

Key permit conditions imposed by the council were also successfully challenged and overturned, allowing the project to move forward and providing precedent that may be useful for other projects in the future.

Key VCAT considerations

The VCAT hearing delved into several key issues, including

• Clauses 55 and 56 objectives: compliance with residential design, landscaping, energy efficiency and street integration.
• Balancing policies: reconciliation of policies promoting higher-density housing with those safeguarding existing industry.
• Amenity impacts: consideration of potential negative impacts from nearby industrial uses.

One of the reasons this project was originally refused by council was the lime batching site in the vicinity of the proposed development. There were concerns that there would be adverse amenity impacts because of the plant, as it runs 24/7.

These potential ‘adverse amenity impacts’ include noise, dust and odour, which VCAT believed may negatively impact the lives of those in the proposed nearby housing.

However, we had an acoustic expert determine that there would be no negative noise impacts on any homes at Dunbar Road; the batching plant was operating within guidelines and the dwellings would not experience adverse impacts.

Council’s Infrastructure Design Manual (IDM) vs Clause 56.06

A road within Dunbar Road’s design didn’t meet Latrobe City Council’s IDM. They requested that the road be widened to meet the IDM; however, we argued that it met the planning scheme requirements according to clause 56.06, making it acceptable in its current state.

Widening the road would cause the development to become very tight, requiring significant design changes and loss of dwellings. This may have even made the project financially unfeasible for our client.  

When we argued at the VCAT hearing that the designs met the planning scheme, just not the IDM, VCAT agreed that the road met clause 56, and that this was enough to approve the design.

This sets a useful precedent moving forward that adhering to clause 56 overrides whatever may be in a council’s IDM, even when it conflicts with the planning scheme.

Payment for open space

For all developments, public open space is a contribution required to either provide ‘open space’ for communities to avoid overcrowding of developments, or contribute monetarily instead for developments where it is not necessary to include public open space.

The monetary contribution is determined by the value of land. In this case, Latrobe City Council asked our client pay for a valuation of land to determine the payment for public open space.

However, the condition requiring a valuation to be undertaken at the cost of the developer was removed entirely. Our client did not need to get or pay for a valuation, with VCAT finding it unreasonable to have to get that thanks to our arguments.

The fact is, councils value land every year for rates – so getting another valuation, when the land is still the same, is redundant.

This decision establishes a valuable benchmark to consider elsewhere in Victoria, not just within the Latrobe City Council area.

A collaborative approach

The success of our VCAT hearing for our Dunbar Road project is largely attributed to having a coordinated and collaborative approach. This was a large VCAT case, requiring a lot of information about each discipline involved in the project.

Our team’s close work over many years allows us to anticipate problems and take them into consideration early in the design process, ensuring smoother planning and designs.

By working closely with our in-house teams and stakeholders, clients and regulatory authorities, we are proud to be able to deliver impactful and community-focused developments.

At the end of the day, that’s what we aim to do: live our mission to ‘inspire better living’ and actively improve the lives of those we work with and for.