Gubbmint gives up on planning

yeah i got one.

I did some modifications to my bathroom in a property i used to own and at the time, didnt get approval – in my defence, the work i was going was all according to spec, i just skipped over the approval bit because i think they are a pack of idiots.
Anyway it turns out that i had to get it done when i sold the house anyway. In doing so, i discovered that the plumbing in the house had NEVER been up to scratch despite being approved by palm when the place was built, and nothing being identified when i purchased it the first time around. The only bit that was ok, was the work i had done.
lucky me, it cost me $6000 to have it corrected

Chris S:
I’m pretty sure you’ll find the roads and infrastructure in Gungahlin were an ACT Govt. responsibility. The houses being arms-width apart might be developer’s responsibility. The fact that for 7 years they had only one road out, no petrol station or shopping centre might be a different matter too (and certainly a reason that I bought in Dunlop. Also, in my original post, I meant ‘bang-up’ not ‘bag-up’ 😉

I don’t think that it would be a good marketing ploy to have narrow streets etc – but I’m sure it is probably a trend that will continue as the mighty $ seems all powerful nowadays, over any sense of decency, morality and as in this case, facilities… Anyhow, I’ll continue to give them benefit of the doubt until their plans come out – I don’t reckon they could do (much) worse than ACTPLA/PALM…

which reminds me of an interesting ‘little’ story, bear with me here: When building my front retaining wall using railway sleepers, PALM wanted me to get an engineering certificate and soil samples, as well as signed approval from my neighbours, all ’cause I wanted to go to a max. height of 1200mm instead of the 1000mm allowed before those requirements. This would add about $1000 to the cost of the wall (doubling the price) – all because PALM’s planing rules had to be followed. However, when I pointed out that we could stand at our back fence at touch the neighbours roof, the guy said that due to the “small size of blocks” (i.e 850m2 in this case – small? I’ll let you decide), that sometimes they “let things go”. I wonder how much they’ll “let go” with much smaller blocks likely in the new McG West.

Anyone else have a fun PALM/ACTPLA story to share? 😉

And 500 more properties requiring water. That means we’ll all have to move to Stage 4 so that these new developments can have their share of the diminishing water supplies.

I’m not advocating closing the borders, but some constraint is needed until such time as the govt sorts out future water strategies. Whether that is a new dam or whatever, needs to be decided, but more and more restrictions for longer and longer are not the answer.

And Gerry-Built, private developers are responsible for the planning abomination known as Gungahlin; sure, ACT planners are pretty poor, but when this role is handed over to private enterprise the results are even worse.

No good public schools, no decent health services, and soon nowhere decent to build a house. Time to move to Queanbeyan?

My god!!! It will be interesting to see what the roads & block sizes end up like. Surely economics will dictate painfully thin one way roads & tiny block sizes. This will be interesting.

I happily live in Dunlop – with lovely views over looking the (as-yet-to-be-developed West Macgregor). So I guess I frakking wanna’ live here Pandy ;-P

Having attended the WMcG “public consultation” meetings (i.e. this is what we ARE gonna’ do – we just wanna’ see how you *feel*), we were a little suprised to find Pendon Associates study of the WMcG site suggested 1500 dwellings of mixed density (I’d say they had pretty mixed density too). Particular considering the lack of suitable access to the site. (i.e 2 off Osborne Raceway, 1 possibly off Ginninderra Street and 1 off Southern Cross Freeway)

Dunlop is nice. Besides, who wants to catch buses nowadays after Mr Stanhope’s hatchet job? Like anyone in the ACT really wants buses, schools, libraries and health services anyhow…

Oh, and also, could a developer (really) do any worse than the ACT Govt? Especially considering the bag-up job they did of Gungahlin???

who the frack wants to live in Dunlop?

This is how dunlop got those tiny driveway sized roads that busses can’t go on.

Awesome, I always wanted to build a house on a 250 square metre block. I also enjoy the challenge of avoiding collisions on single-lane grid-pattern roads.