Kids’ safety first as Council KOs childcare centre

THE Bass Coast Shire Council has bowed to community objections and acknowledged their own concerns in rejecting an application for a 100-place childcare centre in San Remo.

Council’s planning officers had recommended the application at 89 Shetland Heights Road San Remo be approved with conditions at last week’s council meeting.

But Western Port Ward Councillor Jon Temby moved an alternate motion to refuse the application.

Cr Temby focused on child safety at drop off times, the unsuitable location and the relatively small site for a 100-place centre, but his Western Port Ward colleague Cr Rochelle Halstead said there were also a number of intangibles.

“As a San Remo resident who knows this site well, there are certain times of the year, when driving up the road from the Bass Coast College end, that the sun is shining directly in your eyes and you simply can’t see,” Cr Halstead said.

She said such issues couldn’t be addressed in a planning application but both council and the community were well aware of this, which would be a problem if families and children were crossing the road.

Cr Halstead said local councils had been progressively robbed of their ability to address neighbourhood character, and it was only when an application such as this came before council that you realised how crucial local knowledge could be.

“There are many, many shortcomings in this childcare centre proposal. Approving it would create inconsistencies and breaches with our council’s plans, strategies and guidelines that include, but are not limited to, its inappropriate location, no easy access to public transport, insufficient parking, commercialising residential areas, and numerous environmental breaches,” Cr Temby said.

“We want and should support the development of a new childcare centre in San Remo.

“However, this proposal is far too big for the single block chosen, and should be built on a site where the personal safety of the children attending is given far greater priority, where public transport is available, where a loop road for off-street drop-off and pick-up is available, and where Shetlands Heights Road is not automatically congested to the detriment of all other users, including the emergency services and school buses.

“Despite the proponents’ misinformation that the site was on 85 to 91 Shetland Heights Road, that it is spread over multiple blocks, it is in fact only a single smaller block at number 89 and the proponent cannot even provide sufficient parking for their own staff, let alone any safe space for ongoing child drop-off and pick-up needs.

“It is totally foreseeable that drop-offs and pick-ups will occur on both sides of the narrow Shetland Heights Road.

“When this occurs, the roadway becomes a narrow single-vehicle lane, assuming car doors on the right-hand side are closed. If roadway doors on both vehicles are open, only motorbikes would be able to squeeze through.

“This could physically and psychologically endanger the young families trying to use the facility,” he said.

“Apart from a number of environmental issues, including the need to notify the presence of the highly endangered Latham’s Snipe under the EPBC Act, Shetland Heights Road is used as the alternative highway when there is a highway incident on San Remo side of Potters Hill Road.”

Cr Temby pledged council’s support for the childcare centre to be developed on a larger, more accessible location.

Councillors voted unanimously to refuse the application, all expressing misgivings based on a demonstrated need for such a facility in the town.