Sandy Wilkinson

2022 candidate for Adelaide City Council.
Heritage survey responses.

1. Do you think that Councils and community members need to have a greater voice in planning and development decisions affecting their local area?
   Yes, planning and development are invariably local issues and many local Councillors, myself included are motivated to stand for Council in order to have positive influence in this space. State Government , at the behest of the property and volume housing industry have been wrenching this control away from Councils to the detriment of our amenity and historic character.

2. What role should Councils play in protecting local heritage places from demolition or inappropriate development?
   This is absolutely a role for Local Councils. Planning should serve two fundamental purposes in this order: firstly to protect that which the community values, ie our heritage and historic character properties secondly to control how changes to the area are permitted in order to protect the amenity and desired character which we seek to respect with new development.

3. How would you seek to improve protections for heritage places in your area?
   Most councils including Adelaide, has manifestly inadequate extent of protection of historic places. This is due to a number of factors including Planning SA not agreeing or allowing the extent of protection sought such that in Unley where 70% of properties were identified as historic deserving protection, Plannng SA only agreed to protecting 25% Similarly in Norwood whilst almost 70% of housing stock is historic less than 25% is protected through Historic Conservation Zones or listing. In the city and North Adelaide there are numerous properties that should be protected that currently aren't. I will be actively seeking the protection by way of either Local Heritage listing or expansion of the extent of Historic Area Overlays to the main streets and Representative Item listing of those properties.

4. We rarely see new places added to local heritage listings. Why do you think this is?
   As an example: When I was last on the Adelaide City Council, when the Colleges and Institutions DPA was being put in place by John Rau MP I moved that if we are going to give these colleges and institutions additional developments rights and corresponding increase in property value that at the same time we should heritage list any buildings within those colleges and institutions. 10 properties were identified. The Minister's Local Heritage Advisory Committee recommended not one of these properties including St Mark's Chappel which St Marks said they were happy to have listed. This is because the Local Heritage Criteria Interpretation guidelines have been revised to effectively raise the bar such that only exceptional examples are considired worthy of Local Heritage listing, which in practice means that nothing gets accepted and added to the Local Heritage list. This Criteria interpretation needs to be revised so that properties that the Community would hope to be listed as Local Heritage items can be listed and not omitted for reasons of the bar being too high or the property being slightly altered or missing its original verandah or having been italianated in the 60s etc etc

5. How has the Planning and Design Code impacted on the heritage, amenity, and environment of your area? What changes would you seek to the Code?
   I would seek the expansion of historic area overlays and the increased protection of currently unprotected historic houses and commercial buildings.

6. What are the impacts of infill development in your area? What changes would you seek in the rules around infill development?
   Most demolitions are one for ones in my experience. There are also cases of unlisted historic buildings being lost when they could have been incorporated into a new infill development. I would want to see the option to demolish these places removed so that they do get incorporated.

7. Construction of new housing typically uses 30% labour and 70% materials. Renovation of existing housing stock typically uses 70% labour and 30% materials. What policy changes would you like to see made to encourage people to renovate, rather than demolish and build anew?
   The option to demolish simply needs to be removed.

8. How should the community be informed and involved in decisions about new developments?
   Adjoining owners ought to be notified of development happening next door to them and if a house is being demolished a larger extent of people in the street who share the streetscape should be notified.

9. Do you think there is adequate tree canopy across your local government area?
   No

10. How would you like to see significant and regulated trees in your area protected from removal?
    The significant tree criteria needs to be changed from 3m circumference to 1.5m and the 10m rule needs to be removed as well as the exotic tree exceptions as currently only very large eucalypts are effectively protected and blocks are invariably completely cleared.

11. What involvement should Councils have in decisions about protecting or removing significant and regulated trees?
    This should be decided by Council CAPs

12. What actions would you advocate to slow or mitigate the impacts of climate change in your local government area?
    Reduction of demolitions and the embodied energy that is lost with every demolition. Tree canopy prov cars solar panels etc

13. What issues are there with traffic and parking in your area?
    Commuter parkers taking customer parking away from Main Street traders.

14. How could transport options be improved in your area?
    A tram up O'Connell Street

15. What would your top three priorities be for improving planning policy and outcomes in your local government area?
    Protecting all the historic buildings that deserve protection
    requiring 6 storey development on Main Streets to be set back 12m
    removing Catalst sites from the Planning Code or at least clearly defining the parameters.