Mayor pushes for holiday letting enforcement

A motion within this Thursday’s meeting agenda by Mayor Michael Lyon, if successful, would ask compliance staff ‘to enforce existing consent conditions which prohibit the use of a property as short-term rental accommodation (STRA)’. Compliance staff would also be asked to continue to ‘prohibit the use of short-term rental of housing in new approvals (secondary dwellings, standard homes in the residential areas, and business zones of the Shire)’.

Within his motion, Cr Lyon says, ‘It is becoming clearer that pre-existing consent conditions are enforceable, and that we may still be able to impose enforceable consent conditions on new approvals’. Cr Lyon suggests ‘maintaining our own register of properties that are prohibited from STRA’, and also sending out another round of letters to property owners.

Low-hanging fruit

He described it as ‘low-hanging fruit in the battle to return shortterm lets to the long-term pool’.

‘I think we may need to be creative in future about our evidencegathering, and how we can utilise information to encourage compliance. The absence of rental bond data or a lease agreement covering each premises would be a good start. While we await the judgment of the IPC and new government on our 90-day/365-day STRA precinct proposal, we can send a clear signal of our intention to protect our residential communities’. Within her long and detailed reply in the agenda, Shannon Burt, Director Sustainable Environment and Economy, provided historical context and detailed the ‘considerable’ conflicts between provisions in the Housing State Environmental Planning Policy (SEPP), and Section 4.2 of the Environmental Planning and Assessment Act 1979

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Regeneration Fest coorganiser, Ray Moynihan, told The Echo the event held at the Mullum Community Gardens on Saturday, was an ‘amazing success’.

He said, ‘We estimate that for this new event, there would have been in excess of 1,200 people through the day, (probably more) with 1,002 tickets pre-sold.

Zero waste met

‘At the end of the day, in the face of those numbers, there was only about onethird of a red bin filled (mostly with compostable material anyway), so our aspiration of zero waste to landfill was pretty well met, and the washup stations were a huge hit.

‘The SCU solar Sunflower powered the main tent, and it ended up generating more power than it used during the whole event, including a sublime performance from the Palm Wine Ambassadors.

‘It’s very likely Regeneration will continue, contingent on the right funding and model’, he added.