Shire of Augusta-Margaret River councillors ditch new bushfire risk zones in short-stay planning

Shire councillors have thrown out almost two years of officer work to reform the local government’s short-stay rules to fine tune concerns about bushfire.

In handing down their decision at a meeting in Augusta last week, Shire of Augusta-Margaret River president Julia Meldrum said councillors remained committed to ensuring holiday homes weren’t built in inappropriate high-risk areas.

But strong opposition from some operators, as well as questions raised by the Department of Fire and Emergency Services about the Shire’s methodology for determining bushfire risk, ultimately saw the project go unsupported.

Officers started looking into tightening up rules for rural residential and at-risk properties after instructions from Ms Meldrum, also backed by councillors, at an Augusta meeting in June 2022.

However, last Wednesday night’s decision saw an alternative moved to hang back until the WA Planning Commission released updated bushfire-prone planning guidelines midyear.

The shire would also be informed by a review of its key Bushfire Risk Management Plan that came under fire as the guiding document determining where new Airbnb-style accommodation would be allowed despite the 2017 document being set for a major revamp.

The new rejected policy used the BRMP to class locations across the region into low, medium and high-risk bushfire safety zones, with short-stays not supported in the red zones at all.

Previously, strategic planning manager Matt Cuthbert said officers sought to avoid another costly review of bushfire zones in the region, with the added benefit that low and medium-risk applicants would not have to engage their own consultants.

But 71 of 92 submissions opposed the changes with many echoing DFES’s concerns the three-zone method was itself arbitrary and based on generalised assessments.

Deputy shire president Paula Cristoffanini failed to advance an alternative to ditching the plan completely that allowed officers to still make minor tweaks to the existing policy and then consider further changes once the WAPC guidelines came through.

But councillors were all against the method proposed by officers.

“The proposed changes are neither logical, fair or worth doing,” Cr Cristoffanini said.

Cr David Binks said the proposed zones were “not really workable”.

“They need to be handled on a case-by-case basis by an appropriately qualified person,” he said.

With Cr Cristoffanini’s motion lost, Ms Meldrum instead moved to halt the policy review and await further information from a chief executive report.