The Ararat Rural City Council adopted the Planning Scheme Work Plan for the tasks arising from the Planning Scheme Review at the July 26 meeting.
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Planning for the community is a fundamental element of economic prosperity, sense of place, and custodial care of the environment.
Over an extended period, Council has noticed the document has not kept pace with the needs of the local people and has continued to evolve through layers of control being added but rarely integrated.
It has been determined that without integration it has failed to create a logical and consistent foundation that delivers a clear path to the future that meets the community's needs.
In the Planning Scheme Review Council there were four key findings:
- Need to develop a greater depth of local policy to guide development or implement sustainable growth outcomes specifically
- Need to promote a significant growth initiative for the future to ensure the economic and social stability of the municipality. Implement a process that integrates zoning and overlays after updating the mapping layers so that development prospects reflect the land capability. Incorporate new pieces of work such as Ararat in Transition and the Ararat Flood Study into the planning scheme
Council has planned to develop a group of residents and business owners to oversee, sense check, and challenge the works, to ensure that it is as robust as possible.
This group ideally would comprise people of different ages, from various geographical parts of the municipality, with different life experiences.
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Delivering the planning scheme review promptly involves several key components and stages.
- Gathering of new/updated data on land capability by theme - fire, flood, vegetation
- Ground truthing and sense checking the new data - both by Council and with the Community Reference Group. Reviewing the vision and projected population for the Council area with the view to achieving an environmental and economically sustainable community.
- Synthesising the data through several key policy filters to review the zones and overlays and amending these as needed. Document the findings of the work, the proposed changes, and broadly test proposals with the entire community.
- Review feedback and draft changes to the Planning Scheme
Ararat Council mayor, Cr Jo Armstrong said that reframing the planning scheme would be an "extensive" process.
"It is certainly well worth the investment of resources going into this because our community is going to be living with the results of this for a very long time so we need to get it right," she said.
"I would like to highlight not just only the participation of land owners being very integral to this being a successful process but the other stakeholders which are one of the first elements that we considered as a council.
"I think that has given us a really sound picture to be able to understand the process as it unfolds."
Cr Peter Beales threw his support behind reframing the planning scheme at the July meeting
"I just love plans because then you can hold people accountable for the timeframes put in it," he said.
"This is an extensive plan and we just have to be very vigilant."
Ararat Council deputy mayor, Cr Bob Sanders said the reframing of the planning scheme was a "great idea".
"The layout of where everything is going to be done is really good," he said.
"I certainly urge all landholders to have input into the planning scheme as this will define our planning for the future in the Ararat Rural City.
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