CIVIC organisation, Save Our Berea (SOB), has made a desperate appeal to the municipality’s head of the building inspectorate to meet with them and residents to discuss questionable developments on the Berea.
According to Cheryl Johnson and Kevin Dunkley from SOB, several unhappy residents have approached them regarding the development, which they say will impact negatively on their properties.
“Attempts to get answers from the building inspector has largely met with failure. Several of these new builds are almost complete and neighbours feel their properties have been compromised and that the City has let them down. This sad state of affairs has gone on for too long,” they said.
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According to the duo, the situation has become critical and can no longer be ignored. “We have seen the correspondence between the affected neighbours and city officials and many of the problems are similar, building inspector ignores emails, building inspector promises to enforce bylaws but nothing happens, developers allowed to build more than what has been approved on their plans, offenders seldom penalised for building illegally, instead they are advised by city officials to submit a new plan with deviations, developments are built without approved plans, plans are approved with relaxed side-spaces where neighbours have not given consent, residents are denied access to view plans, city officials have claimed plans are ‘not available’ or ‘lost’ and city officials tell residents they must ‘go the PAIA route’ in order to see plans,” they said.
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It was because of this that SOB appealed to the building inspectorate to agree to a meeting with all the players which Save Our Berea will chair.
“We want the meeting to be attended by the City Manager, the relevant residents and Ward 27 and 31 councillors, so that we can understand why the building inspector has failed to provide a satisfactory service and how the department proposes to go about changing this. Our request has gone up the chain of command to the Deputy Head of Town Planning, who has informed us that he is considering our request,” they said.
Problem developments highlighted by SOB:
317 Vause Road
Concerned residents have contacted Councillor Chris Pappas and Save Our Berea about a large site including 317 Vause Road that is being prepared for development.
Amafa granted a demolition permit for 317 Vause Road, however, if the developers are consolidating three or more sites then they need to do a Heritage Impact Assessment. Save Our Berea has questioned whether this process has been followed. According to the organisation, Amafa is unaware of what is being planned for the site and how it will impact on the heritage buildings in the vicinity. Councillor Chris Pappas said there were apparently no approved building plans which meant that he was unable to tell if the Land Use Management aspects were in order. He said an earthworks permit was pending, yet there was movement on the ground. Pappas claimed that no notices had been issued to residents.
560 Currie Road
A beautiful heritage property at 560 Currie Road has been left to deteriorate, with a neighbour claiming roof tiles had been removed in mid-August soon after which 106mm of rain fell. Neighbours want to know what the future plans for the property are. According to Amafa, the owner has indicated that he wishes to demolish the building.
614 Currie Road
A property at 614 Currie Road has become a bone of contention. After meeting with one of the owners of the development and an on-site inspection, the building inspector discovered that one side of the development was in contravention of the by-laws (apartment wall to boundary wall exceeded minimum distance permitted) and reported to concerned residents that he would issue a notice to the developers instructing them to comply with the existing plans for apply for exemption and have new plans drawn up and passed in order to proceed.
670 Currie Road
A resident lodged an objection to the rezoning of the property at 670 Currie Road, however the rezoning was approved and an appeal was not lodged.
The resident has not had sight of, nor consented to the building plans. The plans have been approved and building work has started.
The resident has been advised that he may not obtain a copy of the plans nor view them without the owner’s consent, and the owner is not prepared to grant consent.
The resident believes that the building is encroaching on his property and requires to ascertain whether the building is in accordance with the approved plans.
Beymerside Road
The property at 25 Beymerside Road was brought to the attention of Berea Mail and Save Our Berea in September.
The building was almost complete at this stage, however neighbours realised only then that the developers had misinformed them of their plans to build higher than the original building on the property.
The building is now almost complete, with the roof going on, and residents feel angered that they had been deceived.
“If there is anything I can do now, it is to warn other people to question developers, to know their rights, to ensure this doesn’t happen to them. Our view is totally blocked by the development,” said the affected resident.
11 Chastely Place
In March Save Our Berea contacted the municipality about two issues at 11 Chastely Place – one was a high dry wall that had collapsed three times into Havelock Road, the other was an alleged illegal build on the neighbouring property at 11 Havelock Road’s north boundary (11 Chasely Place’s south boundary). Several emails went back and forth at the time and Councillor Martin Meyer got involved.
On 26 March a response was received that a meeting had been scheduled with the operational team, however Save Our Berea never received any feedback regarding the meeting. In April, the owner of 11 Havelock Road, the person who had approached Save Our Berea for help, received an engineer’s letter guaranteeing the integrity of the dry wall. The owner of 11 Chasely Place also approached the resident for permission to ‘deviate’ from his original plan (he had already started building) to build a small ‘maid’s room’ and to build instead, a more substantial ‘gym’ with a floor slab.
The resident expressed her concern at the time about whether the shared boundary wall (which is only single brick), could withstand a bigger building with a concrete slab floor. She also asked about sewerage disposal for the new building, but was told there was not going to be any plumbing. The boundary wall between the two properties has since collapsed and despite no plans allegedly being approved, the building of the gym went ahead.
45 Clive Road
Peggy and Ugo Paladini have been battling for months to get to the bottom of a development at 45 Clive Road. They were initially told no plans had been submitted, however the original building was demolished and work went ahead. The building at the site is well under way. The residents visited the municipal offices on many occasions and on 16 October went again to look at the plans that have been approved for 45 Clive Road.
They first approached the Town Planning Department and were told the plans were not in the file but were with the building inspectors. The Building Inspectors’ Department informed them that the inspector was off sick and only he could authorise access to the plans. They said a representative from the Development Applications Department was told by Town Planning that the plans complied with the zoning regulations and was therefore obliged to pass the plans.
He too no longer had access to the plans. At the Information Department, the head of the Building Inspectors told the Paladinis that he had no authority to give them access to the plans. They were referred once again to the Information Officer at the City Hall to apply for access to information.
“After having applied over two weeks ago in terms of this procedure and not having received a reply, we know where that’s going. Where to from here? We will persist with our attempts to get hold of these plans. We must find out what has exactly been approved,” they said.
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