COUNCIL BLUNDER ON HENRY STREET

It seems that there has been a somewhat concerning planning blunder on Henry Street Ravenswood, and arguably one made by Council Officers.

In Council approving a development for 66-88 Henry St. will this mean a very expensive acquisition in the future?

Alternatively, will it be enough to prevent the road or otherwise cause a more expensive or longer route ?

Even if Launceston's General Manager, Robert Dobrzynski, now argues that:

• Council has (or more correctly, may in the future) adopt another suitable course for such a road; and
  
• incorporate that road as a future road in the new Interim Planning Scheme;

then the appropriate course would have been for council to have firstly proposed an amendment to the present planning scheme, removing the present zoning and substituting the alternative future road course. Then the way would have been open (if the amendment was approved by the Tasmanian Planning Commission) for this residential development to proceed to approval without difficulty.

Alternatively, if the new course became part of the Interim Planning Scheme (thus avoiding an amendment to the present scheme), the same result would occur.

Yet again Launceston's ratepayers are at risk of bearing the cost of a bureaucratic blunder, the kind of blunder that tends to accumulate and provide a background for unsustainable rate increases sometime in the future.

Where is the quality assurance in Council decision making? Where can we find if it exists? Who is accountable to who in all this?

Presently, the Tasmanian Ratepayers Association's current submission is that the current construction of a private residence encroaching on the Zoned Future Road (minimum 200m wide reservation, plus a setback dimension) is not valid.

CLICK TO SEE THE RELEVANT CORRESPONDENCE

This is the correspondence concerning the encroachment by a new house development on the land zoned for Future Road as part of an Eastern Road bypassing Launceston central area.