Stony Range Botanic Garden
Our Garden will be overshadowed: a cautionary tale
In coming years, two new apartment towers will stop the sun reaching parts of our Garden.
Can this happen to your Gardens?
This is what has occurred and what you can watch for at your location.
Initial Development Application
In June 2022, we became aware of a large development planned on our northern boundary. It was for two towers of 7 & 5/6 storeys containing 219 apartments & some commercial premises.
Northern Beaches Council manages the Crown Land on which our Garden is sited.
The Council’s Planning unit had been liaising with the developers since at least late 2021. They had sought comments from various Council areas. For the Council section that manages our Garden, these comments were provided by administration staff. However, we weren’t asked for our comments and our immediate Council manager wasn’t told about the development.
After we’d heard rumours about the development, we found several reports on the Council’s planning website from the Council‘s parks, landscape & heritage experts who’d been asked to comment; and they objected to the development, partly due to its impact on us.
We then made the mistake of being comfortable that the Council would object to the development and left it in their hands.
In June 2023 we were informed that a formal Development Application had been lodged and the deadline for public submissions was in three days. We were shocked at the time to see that the Council’s Planners, in preparing the Council’s submission, had ignored the Council experts’ objections and had supported the application.
Do you watch for Development Applications involving land neighbouring your Gardens?
Our submission focused on the overshadowing of our entry, picnic/bbq & children’s play areas, as well as on four threatened species; plus visual impact and use of our small parking area by construction workers & then by residents of the new complex. We requested that the (independent) Sydney North Planning Panel consider our Garden’s status as a rare green space in the middle of (an increasingly crowded) Dee Why; and asked for the buildings to be set back further from our boundary and their heights to be reduced.
The application was approved by the Planning Panel without change in July 2023. However, one of the Panel’s four members issued a dissenting decision due to the ‘unreasonable overshadowing’ of our Garden.
Unfortunately, the story doesn’t end there
The developers lodged a State Significant Development Application on 30 April 2024 to increase the tower heights to 9 & 6/7 storeys and the number of apartments to 280. This application came under a new NSW Government scheme which allows heights to be increased beyond allowed limits. It is being assessed by the NSW Department of Planning & Environment for decision by the Minister.
We lodged a submission objecting to these increases using more detailed arguments than we used against the original development. The Council and our local MPs have also objected to the height increases.
While awaiting the decision on the 2nd DA, the developers have finished demolition at the site and excavations are underway based on the original approval.
Height Limits
While the original application was being processed, we discovered that buildings of the heights initially proposed are allowed because these are the maximum heights specified for the development site in the Local Environment Plan & Development Control Plan prepared by the Council in 2011.
Those Plans included no protections for our Garden. We had no knowledge of what these Plans allowed. The Council has since admitted that the lack of protection for our site was an error.
- Do you know the heights allowed for buildings on land neighbouring your Gardens?
- Do you ensure you become involved when your local LEPs and DCPs are being updated?
Legislation
1) The Flora & Fauna Assessments included with both development applications identified four threatened species in our Garden that would be overshadowed by the development. We were surprised that these plants aren’t covered by either the (Australian) Environment Protection & Biodiversity Act or the (NSW) Biodiversity Conservation Act - because they aren’t ‘local’ species nor ‘important populations’.
We believe this is a major gap in the legislation.
- How many Botanic Gardens include only ‘local’ species as defined by current legislation?
- How many Botanic Gardens contain important plants but not in sufficient numbers to be considered ‘important populations’ under current legislation?
- Aren’t small populations of threatened species in Botanic Gardens important in introducing the public to these plants; and perhaps in providing seeds for insurance populations or even propagating those populations?
The Australian Government is currently in the process of reforming the EPBC Act. Consultations are underway on the final piece of this reform aimed at introducing National Environmental Standards to ‘improve environmental protections and guide decision-making by setting clear outcomes for regulated activities’. It would be good if Botanic Gardens became involved in those consultations.
2) Our experience suggests that NSW planning legislation lacks protections for Botanic Gardens and the plants they contain. Such protections were not mentioned in any of the expert reports included with the DAs, the legal opinion we obtained, nor in the Planning Panel’s judgment. We wonder if this is also the situation in other States and Territories.
3) Also, we can’t find any evidence that the various Botanic Gardens Acts include provisions preventing harmful developments on land neighbouring Botanic Gardens.
What is the point of having Botanic Gardens to preserve and display plant species if the species in these Gardens don’t receive any greater protection than plants in a home garden?
If it is confirmed that Botanic Gardens lack legislative protection, we believe that all Botanic Gardens should begin lobbying MPs to ensure that suitable protections are added to relevant legislation, whether that be Australian or States & Territories.
Stony Range Regional Botanic Garden Committee
Dee Why NSW
September 2024