Hi everyone!
So i guess today we have some progress. Our engineer managed to get the plans done and delivered them himself which was nice. On that note I headed to council yesterday (with a bit of dread I might add, council is always made out to be this bottomless pit of bureucratic BS with piles of paperwork and miles of red tape).
Happy to say that it's getting easier! Two days ago they launched the EHC (http://www.ehc.nsw.gov.au/) Which is a new way of submitting to council for approval of exempt and complying development. You go through an electronic form and then submit your plans, engineering and BASIX as pdfs to the website. These get emailed to your council planning office. They then do a cursory check to pick up on things that may need to be altered BEFORE you have formally lodged your plans for consideration. This includes the fact that you may have to convert to a full DA, which are more costly. However, if everything is hunky dory, you just head down to the council to pay your exorbitant fees. Good thing about this is, you can be fairly sure you will get approval and not be wasting the money on something that will only be rejected. I think more people need to look into complying development and see what they can do to fit within its limitations. It's a much cheaper and quicker process.
Things you could investigate prior to council are the general housing code (http://www.legislation.nsw.gov.au/fragview/inforce/epi+572+2008+pt.3+0+N?tocnav=y) this will explain things like your setbacks from front, back and sides. It's a bit wordy but you can find a more broken down version here (http://housingcode.planning.nsw.gov.au/LinkClick.aspx?fileticket=o6ZfOapvV_M%3D&tabid=40).
The other red flag to watch out for is bushfire zones! I didn't realize until I went in this time that we are technically in a bushfire buffer zone. This is not the end of the world though, have a look at this website (http://www.rfs.nsw.gov.au/dsp_content.cfm?cat_id=1009). After getting a headache from attempting to analyse my block and it's position to bush using the Spatial Information Xchange website (http://maps.six.nsw.gov.au/), I came to the conclusion that it is highly likely that we are at most a BAL 12.5 which is very low and will only have some limitations. At best, a BAL low which will probably have none.
One thing that did trip me up was the width of the block at the building line. Our setback is 6m and at that point, the width is 18.3m. This is where we get an issue. See with a width of less then 18m you can stick to the 900mm side setback rules, not worries. However, at 18m+ you have to have a setback of at least 1500mm. Our lowest? 1460. This meant I had to get the draftsman to rotate it slightly away from north again to get the full 1500. Make sure you have all the information before you try to go through your complying development! If we had formally lodged that, it would have cost us approval.
Anyway, now we just have to wait for the planning guy to go through on monday and have another squiz at it all. Now the EHC is pretty good for most things, you don't have to cart in a million copies of plans and certificates for one thing and the interactivity of the forms make them easier to fill out without falling asleep. This does not exempt you from paperwork entirely!
You still need:
-A driveway construction form which needs to include who is doing the concreting and their insurance details.
-A DA approval form! But I'm doing a CDC? Why do I need this? You need to fill out one part of it, the section 68, A and G bit of the form. All that paper for one tiny bit.
-A Water and Sewer application form
-You may need a bushfire risk assessment form, I'm still not sure about whether we do that or council does, will update once I know.
I'll talk about the fees. Our's ended up being a total of $2400 for approximate cost of development at $230,000. This is the biggest cost we have had to shoulder outside of deposits for land etc. Our draftsman was $700 and our engineer was $900. We got a really good deal on both of those things and I think we made a really good choice to go through these things ourselves and get the right people to do them. We have been really lucky to find all the people we have.
This is by no means the end of the council saga, I would like to document the entire process so that someone who is considering NOT going with a project builder might be able to stumble across and have some more info about what's involved.
The best thing I took away from it is council isn't scary, they want to accept your proposal! They don't want to reject it and they want people to do it right the first time. This means that they want you to come and talk to them, interrupt their day and have a chat about what exactly is required. Take notes! You will not remember a word they say after you leave, it's all jargon and riddles.
Hope this helps someone, be back soon with more updates.
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