Building industry held up by new approval regime?

LG,

Easements detail are found under ACTEWAGL website: infor for the builder or some such.

Basically you need to leave 3 m clear horizontally and unlimited vertically over the easement. small shrubs, paving and small sheds are allowed to encroach.

Also you need to leave a permanent 2.7 m emergency access path way to the easement, unlimited vertically. If you don’t have one, ACTEW can come in and knock a pathway through and charge you for it. Seriously.

LG

From past involvement with PALM (now ACTPLA), I think I am correct by stating that you can’t build anything permanent on an easement ie garden shed, retaining wall.

As for the type, I’m not sure. If it’s an electrical easement I don’t see why anything would be a problem as long as there is room around the power pole (if there is one) to check the condition.

If it’s a water (storm/sewerage) easement then nothing permanent can be built on it as ACTEWAGL need access if a pipe collapses or something similar.

I hope this helps but don’t take it as gospel.

gaping whole?

There’s a house one suburb away from me that been in a perpetual state of renovation\delapidation for over five years now.

Anyone know how to force ACTPLA to take action on such a thing?

Bugger. I just submitted an amendment request for an already approved Class 10A…

The old approval was under the old scheme, and took 6 weeks, including 2 weeks of “neighbour notification”

The problem with non-approved structures is not that ACTPLA will make you take them down, it’s that your public liability insurance may not cover injuries on your property. Not sure if it has to be *because* of the unapproved structure or not, but definitely not something I want to test.

I’m with Thumper. Will be putting in a deck next year. Fortunately it’ll be less than 1m high otherwise I might have to have piled up some dirt underneath it to make it less than 1m above ground 😉

On an unrelated note (it actually is unrelated), can someone give me a rundown on easements? Are there different types which affect if/what/how you can build near them.

Thanks!

Over 1m above ground… you need it.