By Cam Lucadou-Wells
Greater Dandenong Council will not issue a “stop work” as it reviews the controversial Keysbrough Townhouses project.
After heated public criticism, the council is set to begin a “peer review” of eight “key issue areas” raised about the 116-dwelling estate under construction at 452 Cheltenham Road.
Residents had raised alarm about the western dwellings standing about a metre from a truck access road into HomeCo shopping centre.
As a result, there was no footpath along the access road to the HomeCo shopping centre, child-care centre and Cheltenham Road bus stop.
The estate’s corner property Lot 1 stands just a metre from a slip lane where trucks enter from an 80km/h roadway.
The intersection has been likened to a notorious truck-route corner at City Road, Southbank in which five pedestrians were injured by a B-double truck cutting the footpath.
At a council meeting on 26 July, Cr Jim Memeti asked why the council wasn’t issuing a stop work while the project was reviewed.
City planning director Jody Bosman said there was “nothing for us to issue a stop-work on” at this stage.
He said in the council’s view, all planning permits were appropriately and lawfully issued – as well as all building permits approved by a private building surveyor, not the council.
“We have to await the outcome of the peer review on these matters.
“If there’s anything to be done, we will take it forward.”
Chief executive John Bennie said the peer review would assess issues including Lot 1, the proximity of a light power pole from Lot 1, front setbacks from Lot 1, the footpath network within and outside the estate, several easements and parking inside and outside the state.
The review will be undertaken by council officers from the planning, engineering and traffic safety departments as well as “external third-party specialists”.
They would potentially report on the work undertaken and ways to “address or redress matters brought to our attention”, Mr Bennie said.
The findings are expected by the end of August.
Recently Mr Bennie stated in correspondence that there were “many issues that warrant some attention”.
Ex-mayor Peter Brown had warned councillors and officers faced the risk of “criminal negligence” and civil lawsuits if a resident or pedestrian was killed or injured at the intersection near Lot 1.
The intersection design was a “travesty of town planning exposing pedestrians and vehicle users to foreseeable, unreasonable, serious risk to life and limb”, Mr Brown wrote.
The townhouses’ current position was in an amended permit approved by a council officer in 2018.
The application by developer Salter Brothers was neither advertised to the public or put in front of Greater Dandenong councillors.
