Risksmart, where the palms come pre-greased...

As I said in my previous post, they're subdividing the unit block next to the old house for some redevelopment. This is the size of the yard, which stretches out to the back of the cubby house they're taking down in the picture

 and this is the original house

Want to take a guess about how many people the greedheads are going to squeeze into that space? Three town houses and affiliated parking, in other words 6 more people (and 6 more cars) will be slotted into this gap

They're also moving the Queenslander forward to give a bit more space, so instead of the house sitting back in the centre of its own leafy garden it will look something like this

Subdivision and redevelopment is getting more common and the original Queenslander is shoved to one side, accompanied by a concrete corridor which leads to the townhouse behind. Really fits in with the character of the suburb hey?

The developers submitted the justification for their application and quite openly admitted that they weren't meeting council regulations for low-medium residential development because -

• The shared open space wasn't adequate
• The rear boundary was 2m too close to the back fence (4m instead of 6m)
• The development exceeded maximum height guidelines
• The roof design didn't meet required standards
• One of the town houses only had 60% of the minimum required ground floor private open space (21.6 sqm instead of 35 sqm)

There was also a lot of community concern, not just because of the lack of privacy that having three new houses at the back of the property able to peer into neighbouring residents bedrooms would bring. The road that the house sits on is already very busy and is full of schoolkids on a weekday morning - we've seen one accident already - and adding a new and regularly used driveway literally 6m from a roundabout is going to add to the chaos. I give it a month before a resident is back-ended slowing down to pull into the driveway when the guy behind thinks he's turning at the roundabout. 

Obviously once the plans were posted there were a few protests, both from local residents and from the local councillor. So you'd think that the development would at least get a close look from the local council team tasked with monitoring local development. But no - the developer submitted their response to the objections with vague arguments like justifying the lack of open space because 'the planned development is adjacent to a park', and five days later approval was given. Five days. With no audit trail & no reasons as to why the development regulations were allowed to be flouted. 

Turns out the development team were 'Risksmart accredited'. Risksmart is a Brisbane City Council scheme which is designed to speed up the granting of 'low risk developments that have little impact on the neighbourhood and environment and which comply with the requirements of the City Plan'. Given that this development is trashing the neighbourhood, endangering kids on their way to school, blatantly ignoring the City Plan and has been called 'a terrible solution' by the local councillor then it makes you wonder why the development went through so quickly.

I guess that the Risksmart scheme allows you to register your brown paper bags early.