Browse Forums General Discussion 1 Feb 18, 2016 7:52 am Plans were taking longer than expected to be approved by council and heard yesterday that they may not approve our relaxation to be 400mm closer on one boundary. Our house plan is narrow enough to fit on our block but we decided, to avoid the cost of a drop beam and to give us another small paved outdoor area closer to sliding doors off the kitchen, to increase the 200mm gap on our zero boundary to 500. Our builder assured us it was a no biggy, they'd had the same thing at another house they built in the same subdivision that council passed. Our neighbours slab has just gone down and his house is so close to the boundary his bed will practiculary be in our living area, so the extra gap put us further away from him. But no, council have decided they may not allow it. Our building company is working with their certifiers to come up with a solution so it will be an anxious day at work making excuses to go to my locker to check my phone. My biggest worry is if it has to go back to draughting and be resubmitted to council we may not get a house up by the time specified by the covenants which grows ever closer at each delay. Re: An Anxious Wait Today 3Feb 18, 2016 7:18 pm Beazley77 Hopefully it's all fine but unfortunately they it's probably just the first of a number of anxious moments or changes to plans or schedules you'll experience building a house Not good news at all. This subdivision has been a 5 year project, all blocks have been sold and there are only about 10 houses left to be built, that includes ours. In December council decided to change the rules regarding this subdivision and not issue anymore relaxations. They let our builder know in December but said they would 'consider' ours but it would be the very last. This is what I found out today. So, they took our fee and pretty much straight away turned it down! Our certifiers and builder are in talking with council about it now and we should have an answer tommorrow. We are talking 250mm here, they want a metre from eaves to boundary, we are asking to be allowed 750mm Re: An Anxious Wait Today 4Feb 19, 2016 10:02 am 1st-timers We are talking 250mm here, they want a metre from eaves to boundary, we are asking to be allowed 750mm Relaxation are normally for rules, which if broken, do not impact on the neighbourhood. Closing the setback to a boundary is always a potential source of conflict. Your neighbour I might well be concerned about every last mm that puts you house closer to his. Do no be surprised if it is not allowed. Re: An Anxious Wait Today 5Feb 19, 2016 7:12 pm qebtel 1st-timers We are talking 250mm here, they want a metre from eaves to boundary, we are asking to be allowed 750mm Relaxation are normally for rules, which if broken, do not impact on the neighbourhood. Closing the setback to a boundary is always a potential source of conflict. Your neighbour I might well be concerned about every last mm that puts you house closer to his. Do no be surprised if it is not allowed. I don't think our neighbour would be aware we have applied for the relaxation. He is also yet to build. From what I can gather, council have suddenly realised they have granted too many relaxations 'not in accordance with their plan of development', but they were happy to take our money knowing they were going to turn us down. They have turned us down so we now have to reduce the 590mm gap we were planning on the zero boundary to 200mm, requiring a trip back to draughting and a drop beam we were hoping to avoid. As they have allowed our neighbour on that side to build much closer to our shared boundary we will now be extremly close, but will have 1.140m from the eaves to the boundary on the side we had wanted the relaxation for. I do feel sorry for our neighbour as his bedrooms are on our shared boundary and he has young children, but our living area is on that side, luckily we are not noisy people and consider ourselves to be considerate neighbours. Re: An Anxious Wait Today 6Feb 23, 2016 9:18 am Spoke to the officer in charge of our case at council yesterday and so glad I did. He explained it all to me and makes perfect sense now. Apparently wanting to build 250mm closer to boundary is classed as a minor relaxation, wanting the entire wall of the house to be that close is a major relaxation and they weren't prepared to allow that. Had it just been a small section they probably would have. What I didn't know is that the garage wall on the zero boundary can be 9 metres, but part of our 9m is laundry/pantry and is classed as part of the house. So there was a relaxation requested for that which they have allowed. He also said as soon as he has a revised draughts from the builder he will approve it straight away. Its my husbands birthday in 2 weeks, I would love to have good news (like some sort of date for site works) on that day. Re: An Anxious Wait Today 7Feb 26, 2016 5:58 pm Wow. Council have done a complete turn-around and approved our relaxation. Our builder was shocked when the paperwork arrived today as last Friday she received an email from them saying 'no'. Funny how after I spoke to council they changed their minds. Goes to show been polite, sympathetic to their point of view and expressing appreciation at the time they have taken for us, can work miracles. I spoke to them on the 22nd, they approved on the 24th! 1 13125 |