Developer Webb & Brown-Neaves has succeeded in setting up a display house in Dalkeith after being entangled with the City of Nedlands in the State Administrative Tribunal.
Developer Webb & Brown-Neaves has succeeded in setting up a display house in Dalkeith after a dispute with the City of Nedlands in the State Administrative Tribunal.
The city’s council twice refused the developer’s application to temporarily change the use of a house, on the corner of Curlew Road and Waratah Avenue, from residential to display home last year.
Webb & Brown-Neaves first lodged the application for 20 Curlew Road with the city in January 2022 and applied for a review with SAT in June.
The company, formed by John Webb and Garry Brown-Neaves, is part of Dale Alcock's ABN Group.
In a decision delivered yesterday, SAT member Ross Povey allowed Webb & Brown-Neaves’s application for review and overruled the council’s decision, substituting it for an approval.
Mr Povey said the proposal was for a small-scale non-residential activity with amenity impacts on the locality capable of being managed through additional measures.
He also found that the city did not identify concerns with another display house nearby, which has been operating for 18 months.
“The (operational management plan) includes designated operating hours and a restriction to six adults visiting the proposed development and the requirement to encourage visitation by appointment,” he said in the SAT decision.
Mr Povey said the tribunal would grant the change of use with conditions that the approval was temporary with the property to return as a single house use after 18 months, signage to be displayed during hours of operation only and a visitor log with details of name, contact and vehicle registration be maintained at all times.
An increase in vehicle movements on the street and a display home being deemed inappropriate for the area were the reasons cited by Nedlands councillors who refused the change of use application at a council meeting in May.
Two other applications for display home change of use were refused at the May meeting.
Despite mediation and the SAT inviting the city to reconsider its decision, the council reaffirmed its refusal of making 20 Curlew Road house a display home at its August meeting.
The council’s refusal of Webb & Brown-Neaves’ display home application were both times in contradiction of the city’s planning staff recommending the proposed change of use be approved.
Yesterday's SAT decision follows a string of tribunal rulings against the council's planning decisions in the past 12 months.
