Better Apartments Draft Design Standards

What it means for Parking & Waste Management

With the release of the Better Apartments Draft Design Standards for public comment, we took the opportunity to filter through the document to find any items of relevance to car parking, traffic and waste management and how these might impact on future residential developments.

Car Parking & Traffic

Whilst car parking provision and design is often raised as a key issue in any Planning Application, it was rated on the lower end of importance during the initial stages of public engagement. Unsurprisingly, the issue of parking provision requirements was met with conflicting views, with strong views held on both the need for and against minimum provision requirements. Interestingly enough, there was no comment on the provision, location or design of car parking within the draft standards.

With a focus on providing affordable housing as one of the key objectives of the document, it is interesting to see something as important as parking provision, which has potentially huge impacts on housing prices, not addressed at this stage.

Waste Management

With regard to waste management, consultation identified the importance of determining waste collection requirements early in the planning process, with many municipalities now requiring preparation of Waste Management Plan with the planning permit application.

The draft standards have outlined the need for dedicated, convenient and well-designed waste facilities. They have also formally detailed the need for Waste Management Plans as part of the planning process.

This requirement mirrors our experience that that waste issues should be considered as early as possible to ensure a complete picture of the developments’ spatial servicing requirements can be considered at the same time as traffic and parking often are.

Storage

One of the other items worth noting was dwelling storage, with between 6 and 10 cubic metres recommended for each dwelling. With less than 4 cubic metres of storage available in a typical over-bonnet arrangement, there is a significant amount of storage that needs to be accommodated elsewhere within a development.