Victorian farmer's retirement plans come unstuck

The farmer's retirement plans came unstuck through the same planning restrictions intended to protect farm land from being broken up into housing lots.

Although the council staff recommended to reject the farmer's application to create a two-lot subdivision from his 61 hectare (151 acre) block near Peterborough, some councillors disagreed.

The neighbour is already leasing the farmer's land who wanted to retire on the property in the farm house on a newly created two hectare lot.

"The proposed subdivision is sought so the owners can stay in the existing dwelling after retiring from farming, with the balance farm land intended to be sold to a neighbouring farm," the council was told.

The farmer spoke to the councillors at the meeting.

"I have retired from farming, it makes sense to me to sell the land so I can fully retire." he said.

"We want to stay in our house."

Council's planners pointed out the farm was in its farming zone, which sets a minimum lot size of 40ha but still allows the creation of home lots.

"It is considered the proposed subdivision, which creates an isolated rural-residential lot within the Farming Zone, does not provide an acceptable response to the relevant strategic direction, planning policy and controls of the planning scheme," council was told.

"The planning scheme discourages the creation of small rural residential lots in productive agricultural areas which have the potential to impact on the continuation of agriculture."

No objections were lodged by the public when the proposal was advertised, and council staff and councillors visited the farmer on-site on his block earlier in the month.

"The application raises key issues for council to consider, including the need to protect agricultural land, avoid fragmentation of agricultural land and subdivision which may impact on the 'right to farm' due to land use conflict," council was told this week.

Cr Jamie Vogels moved for council to approve the application, saying there no public objections, with support from Cr Nick Cole.

The vote on that motion failed - two voting for and five against.

Cr Ruth Gstrein said she understood there'd been no public objections but said "nobody was looking at the application with the lens of the municipal planning strategy".

"I certainly sympathise with (the owners) on what they're trying to achieve, but this is just not the best way for doing it," Cr Gstrein said.

Cr Geraldine Conheady said council should always protect agricultural land.

"These kinds of applications are potentially going to cause a great deal of fragmentation throughout the shire, in effect it's ad-hoc development via imprudent measures if we aren't careful and don't think thoroughly about these decisions that are before us," she said.

Council voted in the majority to reject the application.

with Warrnambool Standard