Calls for road access policy to be reviewed

Jonathan O’Neill oneill.jonathan1@outlook.com

Atweak to the planning scheme to make developing properties without road access easier, may not be resolved before the current scheme is reviewed.

Southern Downs Deputy Mayor, Ross Bartley stressed that the emerging issue of road access for new builds is probably of Council’s own making.

“One of the main rules as far as planning goes is if someone wants to build a residence in an area where there’s an unformed road, they must construct the road to our satisfaction… it’s an enormous cost,” Cr Bartley said.

“We have a road hierarchy… we have a policy for the provision of road transportation… the definitions are quite enlightening on how to use this policy,” Cr Bartley said.

“What’s occurring is, we cannot maintain these roads, and it’s understandable why… we’ve got so much on our plate with what’s happened with flood damage,” Cr Bartley said.

“We can’t keep all our roads that carry a couple of hundred vehicles a day okay… we are going to be resource stretched… and I think it’s time we need to look at our planning policy in conjunction with our road hierarchy and we need to establish a road register which we haven’t got,” Cr Bartley said.

“At the end of it, we need to come to an agreement that in the future we don’t insist on these fairly elaborate roads and just insist on a track on the road reserve that we maintain, not to the level that people expect,” Cr Bartley said.

The Deputy Mayor highlighted that in the planning scheme, a new building application will not be approved unless an all-weather access road is constructed, and called for a workshop or information session to address the terminology issue in the upcoming planning scheme review.

“Is that what we want in our new planning scheme? I’m starting to think we need to think seriously about writing another form of terminology to given give them all-weather access so an emergency vehicle could get there if they had to… that’s about all