sorry business: Council’s changes to Hunters Hill LEP

Cowell Street cottage

The Trust contacted the Hon Mark Speakman, Minister for Heritage and Minister for Environment to tell the sorry tale about how Council’s last minute changes to the Local Environment Plan allow the publicly owned, heritage listed building at 10 Cowell Street Gladesville to be relocated from its current site.

‘We feel that Council has misled the community.  We have come to believe that, as owner of the property at 10 Cowell Street, Council’s real interest is to ensure that the development of the Gladesville Shopping Village is not encumbered by any heritage listing on the lot.  This is because the land is more valuable if it can have umpteen units built on it.   In other words Council has a clear vested interest in removing the building from the development site.

The listing of the building without its curtilage is quite ingenuous as it is simply a nod to the developer to make a proposal to move it somewhere else, or, in a more likely scenario, to propose a full photographic survey of the property prior to its demolition.’

Read the full letter:   NSW Minister for Environment & Heritage.