THE Shire of Northam held a workshop on a proposed new heritage planning policy last Wednesday evening at the Northam Recreation Centre.
If adopted by council, the policy will initially cover parts of Fitzgerald and Gordon Streets but will be expanded to other locations in the future. Northam Shire president Steven Pollard explained the situation.
“Basically the Shire has heritage as one of its key elements,” Mr Pollard said.
“So under the Local Planning Scheme, which governs buildings and places, we are entitled to have things called heritage precincts.
“We’ve looked at a couple of spots to make a start on heritage precincts – part of Fitzgerald Street and part of Gordon Street.”
Heritage precincts are an area that have been found to have heritage significance for aesthetic, architectural, historic, scientific, social and/or spiritual reasons.
A heritage consultant was commissioned by the Shire in January 2015 to prepare design guidelines that could be applied to commercial and residential areas in Northam.
The scope of the project included supplementary guidelines for the area defined by 23-325 and 16-334 Fitzgerald Street, and 1-15 and 12-18 Peel Terrace, including 17-87 and 16-86 Gordon Street. Mr Pollard said if the proposed policy gets through council, further precincts will be looked at.
“Chidlow Street and a whole raft of others streets, potentially, could be heritage precincts,” Mr Pollard said.
Manager Planning Services Kobus Nieuwoudt prepared a short PowerPoint presentation to further explain the situation. Mr Nieuwoudt explained landowners are not required to restore their property to its original appearance.
Upon listening to the spiel, Northam resident Stan Malinowski expressed his concerns.
“I think we are losing track here,” Mr Malinowski said.
“There’s a limit to how many heritage listings you need to have – I agree entirely there should be some protection, but I think we are over-reacting here.
“We have a town planning scheme that already covers a lot of this.”
Shire of Northam chief executive Jason Whiteaker said the general intent is to recognise Northam does have a significant amount of heritage buildings. “The key themes that come through to us are heritage, commerce and lifestyle,” Mr Whiteaker said. “The intent of the policy is certainly not to stifle development.”
