I thought that may be the case as it didnt seem like all that many applications and not many being approved

So I was kind of wondering why so long! I can't see that CoC would have the same kind of volumes as say baldivis or mandurah areas so it doesn't make sense!

And you would think a planning department would be capable of planning their staff satisfactorily!!!! Let's just hope they didn't cut anyone with last weeks budget!

I can't see how they'd be different than ours (Mandurah) - we had our approval in under two weeks!

I have not had a problem with the City of Cockburn... whenever i call i get someone in planning who is more then helpful... Our initial plan was approved in 3 weeks then we made changes to the stucture which meant the plans needed to be resubmitted which was on April 23rd. Monday just gone we received our building approval wooo hooo.... Our cockburn council surveyor was Neville... he is fab......
They had everything they needed, water corp approval, building insurance and our plans met the councils requirements..... If I was you I would try get in direct contact with the surveyor who is handling your application.... At least they can explain to you what they are waiting for... good luck...

Hi marybond, you got yours approved that quickly because you had Neville!!! Very lucky for you He is the super efficient surveyor I've made mention of a little earlier in the thread. I spoke to him a couple of times and he was extremely helpful. We've spoken directly with our surveyor a few times now, he's been fairly apologetic about how slow going it all is but hasn't really given us an explanation as to why, just that he hadn't got the chance to reach ours in his pile yet. The most recent update is that we've had a referral to the health dept for noise assessment and City of Cockburn won't do anything else on the application until the get the go ahead from the Health Dept. I've had two different at City of Cockburn tell me that now. It's frustrating because there isn't any transparency in their internal processes and we're left sitting here hoping that things are being done accordingly. Despite the slowness of the process, I've got absolutely no complaints about their customer service at all, they've always been very friendly and polite and I'm pretty sure a few of them even know who I am now, I call up that often!

Hi JJ's,

Welcome to the forum and welcome to Aubin Gardens! Where abouts in the estate are you building?

There is also another forum on here for all the Aubin Grove/Garden peeps to ask questions about the estate and spy on what has been built, I think it has gone cold now as most people have finished their builds, but still an interesting read and resource. As a first time builder there is a wealth of knowledge between all of us and some pretty usefeul links.

viewtopic.php?f=31&t=33638

Good luck and Keep the updates coming.

Hey Uncle Tonsky,

Thanks for the welcome I've been checking out all the Aubin Grove builds over the last 18 months or so on the forum, you all have beautiful houses and seem like you really love living in the area. We're building in that funny little pocket of land down the end of Gaebler Road, a couple mins walk away from the IGA. It's super convenient to a lot of things in the suburb, so we're quite happy...just gotta get something resembling a house happening some time soon, hahah.

Did whatshisface call you back from the Health department??

He sure did Ally, with some not so good news: Health Dept have no records of anything to do with our building application, our names/details don't show up on the system at all and it's unlikely that CoC have ever sent anything through to them because it's not their area to deal with. He referred me to Department of Environment & Conservation because they usually deal with noise assessments at this stage of the building process. Arrrgh. Sure the council hasn't mixed up the two departments? They're very different agencies, one would think it shouldn't be something a local government could confuse - especially considering that they would have had hundreds of building applications dealing with noise assessments from their constituency.

I then called the shire dept at SPH - was informed that our file was sitting on the desk of the drafting manager and that he was due to call us to discuss a few things, because they'd received correspondence from the council. The lady I spoke to wouldn't elaborate on what was going on, but just to expect a call from drafting soon. So now I'm worried

OMG what a run-around! I really hope it is all sorted out for you very soon. I have spent most of the morning on the phone to both the council and the builder and are more convinced than ever that the council has absolutely no idea what is going on in their own offices!

Oh for F's sake. They really love buggering you around, don't they? Argh!

I feel as though I'm always having a whinge, and I'm generally not a whingey kind of person - so I'm already starting to dislike what this building process is doing to my personality, haha

I feel the same! I have turned into this evil version of myself that chases people down and seems to always be complaining about something

Welcome to the club. Apparently building makes us go crazy

Omg. That's terrible news

I think you are well within your rights to be going mental!!

By the end of this we will be "buildzillas"

:O

I would totally watch that as a TV show!

Buildzillas! hahahah, that's awesome Perfect idea for a tv show, although I reckon it'd be hard to do because of the defamation risk...we'd all have to have our faces blurred out and they'd have to use a vocoder for our voices, hahah....and then it might turn out like something off Today Tonight, heheh.

I worry a little bit about how many building companies frequent this forum - I know there are a couple of companies that seem to have designated staff who post on here and provide support to all the clients, which is good... but it's something to keep us all in check, I think!

Oooo I wanna be a buildizilla You could be onto a money maker there haha

I have often wondered how many builders watch the forum but never comment. I think as long as you are only stating your opinion based on your experiences then it's not defamation.


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i must admit one of my guilty pleasures is bridezilla's

buildzillas would be even better! we can rage at builders, councils and DH's & DP's

as it is i am addicted to grand designs, and when they brought out the Australian one I was like

I didn't get a call back from the drafting manager at SPH. I had to call back myself today. I still didn't get a chance to speak to him directly, but the message that was passed on to me was basically that City of Cockburn need to do a noise assessment on our block, and our plans are back in drafting because City of Cockburn doesn't believe the house is designed to meet the noise requirements - "Oh, I think you need thicker windows than normal..." Ummm...no s*%#!!! I flat out told the woman that I was speaking to, that adhering to the requirements of the noise assessments was a special condition in the O&A and that we have been aware of this from day one and we have all the environmental reports and recommendations etc....to which she replied "Oh, did you show this do your sales rep at the beginning?" No, I've shredded it all because it's not integral to the house and the extra few thousand we had added onto the total price for thicker windows was a figment of my imagination.

We've got the required 6mm windows and it's clearly stated on the plans. Why hasn't anyone seen this? I'm certain SPH have a copy of all the previous noise assessments, but if they don't, I told them I would send it all in to them. The thing is, I don't even know why the council doesn't have this information. How did they approve the subdivision of the estate if they don't have any of this on record?

I'm kinda fuming right now.

What the he*ll???? Are they blind???
It's the same as ours, we had to have thicker windows at the back - but it never went to a different department or took a long time??

Wow, I hate it when big government and business departments don't have any idea of how to talk to each other! Argh!

I am angry on your behalf now!