9 Centennial Avenue

At the last meeting of the Association, members moved the following resolution which was forwarded to Willoughby Council:

It was moved, seconded and carried that the Association write to Council to “express concern about the variances in the Council report and resident’s records, in particular to the number of community supporters in favour of listing the property as a Heritage Item”

Below is the Council Officer’s response:

I have been asked to respond to your email below.

As stated in the response to Councillor Saville’s Question on Notice on the Agenda Paper last Monday (Item 21.1) 96 submissions were received in response to the notification of the draft Local Environmental Plan (draft LEP) to list 9 Centennial Avenue as a Local Heritage Item. Of these submissions 85 objected to listing the property as a Local Heritage Item and 11 supported listing. These numbers have been checked in Council’s system and confirmed. Consideration of the listing of the property as a Heritage Item was not the subject of the report to Council at Item 13.3 of last Monday’s Agenda Paper and as such these submissions were not referred to in the report. A separate report will come before Council (intended for meeting of 25 March) in respect to listing of the property.

Reference has regularly been made to a petition containing over 400 signatories in support of the listing of the property. As stated in Item 21.1 a search of Council records has not located a petition of 400 or more signatories. When addressing Council, one of the residents made reference to this petition referring to it as ‘on-line’. This has since been investigated and I can confirm that there is an on-line Change.org petition regarding 9 Centennial Avenue headed ‘Save this Historic Home’ which has 432 supporters. This is not a document lodged with Council and access to signatories is not available and therefore cannot be considered an official submission in response to the exhibition of the draft LEP. Nevertheless, this petition will be referred to in the report to Council in March under ‘Discussion’. Correspondence and a petition (containing 61 signatories) received prior to exhibition of the draft LEP for listing will also be noted in the report.

I trust you appreciate that the reports to the Council meeting of Monday 25 February 2019 in respect to 9 Centennial Avenue did not contain inaccuracies and was not intended in any way to mislead. The report at Item 13.3 was specifically related to Councillor Saville’s Notice of Motion for weather protection to the building and was not concerning the potential listing of the building as a Local Heritage Item.

 Your email, together with this response will be forwarded to all Councillors as requested.