The driveway we want enters the property on the left hand side and comes across the front of the house and loops around to the garage on the right hand side of the house-thus serving the purpose of driveway and firebreak while minimising disturbance of vegetation.
Despite there being no actual council regulations against it and the specific mention to use driveways as firebreaks, the council rejected the permit based on having a driveway that was not a direct route into the building envelope.
We tried to appeal our case directly to the council including showing pictures and satellite images of more than 25% of other houses in our direct area having the same driveway. The council representative said that these driveways were all illegally done and would not grant us an exception to the rule as they were trying to discourage it. I am pretty sure most concreters wouldn't lay down a driveway unless they had prior council approval. Not to mention what did they put on their plans to get their building permit. I asked if there was anything stopping us driving over the ground to get to the garage and he said as long as we weren't putting down bitumen etc then it was fine.
The grounds he rejected our permit on was that is was a development outside the building envelope. We showed him the glossary of terms that basically wrecked his case and the items that mentioned driveways could be placed outside the building envelope but then he would say it was in the act- which says nothing to do with driveways.
Jake and I had spent hours preparing our argument including developing a ridiculous threat that we could put the driveway directly into the building envelope on the left hand side and then take it around the back of the house and to the right hand side. As this would be all in the building envelope they would not be able to stop us and it would mean the clearing of a substantial amount of trees. Most of the regulations are all about trying to keep the area looking natural and maintain ample vegetation. To our shock the representative actually suggested we do that.
We could tell we were getting nowhere so we decided to change the plans to the proposed driveway and get our permit and fight the driveway battle at a later date.
Onward to scheduling!
