Oscar Parry
Macedon Ranges council will ask the planning minister for a protected settlement boundary for Gisborne after adopting its draft Gisborne futures structure plan.
With the final draft presented at the council’s July 24 meeting, the Gisborne futures structure plan will guide growth and development of Gisborne until 2050.
The council will write to Planning Minister Sonya Kilkenny to request an amendment to its planning policy to insert a protected settlement boundary for Gisborne. Council will also seek community consultation on the proposed boundary.
The structure plan was developed over the last seven years and included four phases of community consultation.
According to a recently published council community consultation report, of the 129 written submissions in phase four of community consultation, responses expressed a broad range of requests.
With late submissions recorded into early 2024, the report showed that 25 per cent supported the draft plan proposed in Phase four, 29 per cent did not support township growth in principle or the level of growth proposed, 34 per cent wanted growth elsewhere, and 12 per cent advocated for a single issue within the plan.
The consultation report also said through an online survey with 370 respondents, 70 per cent didn’t support the structure plan and thought it should look at growth elsewhere, 50 per cent believed it should include more land, 11 per cent thought it was about right, and nearly three per cent thought it should include less land.
In the July 24 council meeting, council’s director of planning and environment Rebecca Stockfeld said that the plan was prepared with input from community, councillors, internal departments of council, external service agencies, and expert consultants.
Cr Christine Walker said that the feedback was “as diverse as you can imagine” with “submissions that have been diametrically opposed”, varying from supporting diversity of housing, to limiting spread of the township, to opposing any change at all.
Cr Rob Guthrie, who voted against the plan, expressed concerns about housing density, which he said was “out of character for us in a rural area” and that he believed it would “destroy the area”.
Cr Guthrie said that “it just seems that we lost the plot.”
When put to a vote, all councillors present except Cr Guthrie were in favour of the motion, and it was carried.
