LINLEY LUTTON is an urban planner and until recently a member of Fremantle city council’s design advisory committee. Last week he quit from the committee, and now says he couldn’t bear the politic interference and having his committee’s advice fiddled with by a councillor.

I HAVE been told of many rumours about why I resigned from the Fremantle Design Advisory Committee.

I resigned due to my growing sense of dismay at the culture in which the DAC operates.

Design advisory or design review committees are being established in many councils. When operated properly, they are of great value to the community.

I am a founding member of the Design Review Committee at  Victoria Park which has worked effectively for 14 years so I have experienced firsthand the good work some committees do.

The objective of these committees is to ensure councillors and council officers receive the best advice possible on the acceptability of medium to large-scale developments.

They serve the community by ensuring the built environment is as good as it can be.

To be effective these committees must act independently and be unswayed by political agendas.

These are the three major issues which led to my decision to stand down from the DAC. Most deal with independence and political agendas:

• On three occasions the DAC was advised that ‘this project is important to the city’ or ‘the mayor wants to see this project proceed’. I felt my independence was weakened before evaluation had even started. The desires of the city or the mayor should be irrelevant when undertaking design evaluation.

• I was told by a senior officer that at least one councillor edited staff reports including comments made about DAC findings. I have since had this corroborated; and,

• I discovered DAC reports would go to the planning committee and be ‘moulded’ into a final report before going to full council.

One apartment block caused the DAC great concern, but the Planning and Services Committee virtually ignored its advice. They asked us to focus only on the building’s appearance.

Evaluating design goes beyond appearance. Internal amenity; environmental performance; site planning; traffic impact; functional and spatial adequacy; serviceability; impact on surrounding properties; contribution to the precinct; streetscape and landscape; impact on the public domain at street level; and, impact on the micro-climate all need evaluation, which takes experienced experts.

When I complained about what I felt was political interference by the planning committee I was told it was a delegated committee with the right to override DAC findings.

I accepted the right of elected members to disregard DAC findings, however argued the full council should decide on DAC findings, not a sub-set with a strong pro-development group.

My objection and concerns fell on deaf ears.

Victoria Park’s advisory committee is highly regarded and completely independent. There is no opportunity for councillors to mould its findings. Political agendas simply do not enter into the equation and councillors are certainly not allowed to edit any officer’s report.

On Fremantle’s DAC I was involved in assessing large-scale strategic projects at the centre of the council’s development drive.

On several projects the DAC met with the proponents over many months because major problems were not be adequately resolved. On several occasions I suggested that we hold workshops to resolve the issues.

Even after these workshops the proponents wouldn’t address the shortcomings, which were of a substantial nature.

The DAC could not stop these projects because its terms of reference limit its role to giving advice. In Victoria Park, support for a poor project can be withdrawn making it very unlikely to be approved by the elected members. Developers invariably lift their game.

I watched a crisis develop as projects being pushed by the council failed to meet acceptable design standards.

Inevitably they were dealt with by the planning committee in a way which suited certain pro-development agendas.

One problem with councillors who lack planning and design training taking things into their own hands is that developments get through and set a poor precedent.

One particular project has already opened the doors to a raft of design precedents which significantly lower the living standards of apartment dwellers.

The whole idea of holding the line on planning and design issues—regardless of how much the developer pushes their case or the city wants it to occur—is to ensure poor compromises do not get built.

This is precisely why officers’ reports must not be edited by untrained councillors.

The last straw for me was a proposal for a large strategic site coming back to the DAC with no evidence the architects were prepared to address the poor relationship between the new building and the adjacent public domain—a very serious issue in Fremantle.

My sense of futility was overwhelming as here again was another major strategic project going down the same path of compromise where the wants of a developer override the best outcome.