The Georges River Record

The Georges River Local Planning Panel met on Thursday, 7 May 2026, to deal with four development applications, three of them already with the Land and Environment Court. Chair Stephen Davies said the panel would hear from registered speakers and then determine the applications in a closed session, with the outcomes on council's website within two to three days.

The panel heard the applications in order: demolition and construction at 3 to 5 Hampton Road, Carlton; demolition works and construction of co-living and boarding housing at 5 Mona Street, Allawah; demolition works and construction of a 14 storey mixed use development with infill affordable shop top housing, five units for shop and co-living housing at 2 to 4 Gladstone and 10 Victor Streets, Kogarah; and alterations and additions to a dwellinghouse at 3 Dinjerra Crescent, Oatley, which comes only to this panel.

On the Hampton Road application, speaker Alicia Pryor, a resident and former Bay ward councillor, asked the panel to refuse the proposal on every ground council staff identified. She said the council assessment report contained 13 reasons for refusal and that she had set out at least 11 more grounds of non-compliance in her written submission. She said clause 6.9 jurisdictional failure alone was sufficient to refuse.

"I'm asking the panel to refuse this application in a way that is appeal resistant, and to use your voice to make sure residents in the Georges River LGA are not put through the same process for the same avoidable reasons."

Pryor said she supported co-living done well but that this proposal did not provide genuine communal space, a mix of room types, appropriate building separation or storage and bicycle parking. She told the panel the application passed through three day advice, was accepted at lodgement and notified to neighbours, and is listed as a class one appeal before a Commissioner of the Land and Environment Court the following Wednesday. She asked the panel to use its advisory voice to recommend reforms to council, including a clause 6.9 sign off at lodgement and a co-living specific lodgement schedule.

On 5 Mona Street, Allawah, speaker Regina Hartley said the application was oversized for the lot and over the acceptable height, and that the building would put her property at 7 Mona Street in full shadow between 9am and 3pm in mid winter. She said nothing in the street is currently over three stories, that the area is family oriented, and that there is already a boarding house at 3 Mona Street. She raised parking, privacy and room size, and said her neighbour at number two, an engineer, had written to council about the site's Ashfield Shale geology and concerns it could not bear the excavation.

On 2 to 4 Gladstone and 10 Victor Streets, Kogarah, Dallas Cairns, co-owner and long term resident of 6 to 8 Victor Street, said the heritage listed property joins the development site at its north east boundary. He told the panel a 14 storey building with a basement within 1.74m of the common boundary would severely impact the structural integrity of the heritage item, and that heritage guidelines state construction within two metres of a heritage building will impact it. He said 11 individual balconies address his property at the rear, with two open balconies at the lower level within 2.7m of the common boundary, and that they would look into his pool area.