Introduction to Dwelling Entitlement
When an allotment has a dwelling entitlement, it means that the applicable planning rules do not prevent, for one reason or another, a consent authority from being able to grant consent to the erection of a dwelling on that land.
For a range of different reasons, some quite technical, a separate allotment may not meet the threshold requirements for the erection of a dwelling, even if a dwelling house is a permissible use in the zone. Clause 4.2A of the relevant local environmental plan (LEP) usually sets out the threshold requirements for land in a rural or environmental zone.
However, even if a local Council provides advice that a particular allotment does not benefit from a dwelling entitlement, we often recommend further investigation.
Case Study: Council say no, we found a dwelling entitlement
Precise Planning recently prepared a development application involving a closed road reserve, purchased by the owners of the adjoining land.
The local Council initially formed the view that the former road reserve did not benefit from a dwelling entitlement because, whilst the road reserve had been in existence as a separate lot prior to the making of the current LEP, the zone maps attached to the previous LEP showed the closed road as being unzoned and that LEP did not contain provisions allowing for the erection of a dwelling house on an arterial road.
However, through careful historical investigations, we discovered that the previous LEP contained a clause that adopted the Environmental Planning & Assessment Model Provisions 1980 (Model Provisions).
We then discovered that the Model Provisions contains a clause allowing a consent authority to issue consent, on a lawfully closed public road, for any purpose which may be carried out either with or without the consent of the consent authority on land adjoining that road.
In other words, for this section of the unzoned closed road, the consent authority was able to approve a dwelling house, provided an approval for a dwelling house is possible on the adjoining land.
Conclusion
The adjoining land was a large parcel with an existing dwelling, so this paved the way for the Council to agree that the closed road allotment benefited from a dwelling entitlement, and therefore, Council issued a development consent.
Our investigations don’t always result in discovering a lot has a dwelling entitlement when others believe it doesn’t. However, it is often worth a closer study.
Precise Planning is proudly part of Deep River. For comprehensive planning and development services, visit us at Deep River.