Forum Replies Created
Thank you for your comments Shangrila00 and Christian B.
Shangrila00,
A great idea suggested by Christian B is to meet with council. We basically sat down with council and said tell us what we need to do to get it approved. They responded with general ideas eg. comply with section… but that was not specific enough for me and when we made the changes they came back with more – I wanted meterage, exact plants we should include etc. as everytime we made changes our architect charged us again. Basically I did not leave till they told me exactly what we needed to do and it was clear. We took our architect, town planner and solicitor with us. Not to be heavy handed but so that everyone heard the same information. It cost us $1000 to get everyone there but that is minute to the thousands we had already spent.Yes the administrators were in the building and read the documentation, however our meeting consisted of the person assigned to the file at the time, the director/head of planning only because I had gone through the process as I described above. They wouldn't meet with you unless you have followed the chain of command – well that is what we found.
Your builder sounds like a bit of a worry. Can you choose someone else?
Christian B.,
Thank you for your professional comments. We did follow the process you described, however over the 2 year period we were assigned 5 different people, so who we originally sat down with left council straight after we lodged. Then each person wanted to make their own alterations even though we seemed to comply. That is why after 3 years I followed the approach I outlined above. Hopefully next time I can work with you.Sandra
We had the same issue with our council. We ended up complying and still got refused. The heartache, the years etc. is draining. We only just got ours approved but I know what you mean about one standard for one property and another standard for another proerty with council. I found ringing every week and having a one person contact in council is what pushed it through. Every couple of months a new person was assigned to our case. In the end I grabbed a name and rang them each week. Each time I rang I asked when I would hear from them again and when I could expect answers for my questions. If they did not comply with what they said or when they said they would, I went higher. Ending up with a note to the Administrators and finally approved.
Hi Richarc,
Your situation sounds exactly like ours regarding the duplex etc. We have only just had our plans approved through council and are also looking to build soon with my brother and father.
One word of advice is to make sure you comply 100% with councils guidelines relating to floor space ratio / maintaining privacy for neighbours etc. as we tried to push the boundaries by about 1% and led to thousands of dollars extra in redesigning. Make sure you do it properly the first time. It ended up costing us about $30,000 to get to this stage – even though we only paid $6000 for our first plans. Extra costs came from drains not on our property but run along side it etc. They wanted us to fix and put graters etc. on our plans. All the surveys for it etc. added up. Luckily, we could share the costs.
Thanks for the information regarding approx $1200 per square metre.
Sandra Taylor
