Woollahra Council wants to introduce a tree mandate to fight private waterside mansion tree felling

By ROBBIE MASON

Woollahra Municipal Council has proposed new urban planning rules that will ensure new private developments are subject to stricter deep soil controls and adequate tree canopy cover, as global temperatures rise as a result of human-driven climate change.

While locals have embraced the proposal, the move has provoked debate and skepticism among those who want to prioritise increasing the city’s housing supply.

Under these proposed changes, properties in low and medium density residential zones will require a minimum of 25 to 35 percent tree canopy cover. Parcels of land will also need to include at least 35 percent deep soil.

Greens Councillor Nicola Grieve told City Hub that the Woollahra local government area (LGA) has seen a “complete loss of canopy” in recent years as hedges and bushes have replaced trees on private properties.

“There was nothing we could do about it.”

Karin Vesk, a Rose Bay resident, expressed support for the proposal, stating that tree loss in her local neighbourhood is “heartbreaking”.

“On an overheating planet, 35% [canopy cover] is the least we can do,” she said.

Vesk condemned the tree-clearing culture of the city’s eastern suburbs and the focus among some residents for unimpaired ocean views.

“Every time we walk around the neighbourhood, we see yet another garden decimated – usually for a bigger, single-family dwelling, or a view. And where houses are replaced by (expensive) townhouses, the properties rise from scorched earth, built to within inches of their boundaries; huge trees replaced with twigs of cypress bought for 19 bucks a bucket at the local Bunnings.”

“Sydney’s east is about money and water views. Trees are for brochures,” she continued.

Greens Councillor Matthew Robertson, who has been instrumental in pushing for these alterations to planning law, emphasised the importance of trees in liveable urban landscapes.

He said that trees are the “best solution” for mitigating the effects of climate change and “the heat island effect which is disproportionally high in the heritage precincts of Woollahra”.

A Woollahra Council spokesperson said, “the new Floor Space Ratio (FSR) standards and urban greening provisions will not adversely affect the supply of housing in the Woollahra LGA. Modelling has demonstrated that the new FSR will allow a similar development yield to the superseded controls.”

Critics accuse council of NIMBYism

Tom Forrest, CEO of Urban Taskforce Australia, a non-profit lobby group for the real estate industry, said that the possibility of “misuse” of the planning rules concerns the organisation.

“Woollahra Council wants to have their cake and eat it too – an approach that sees no height, no new housing, and the problem of dealing with the housing supply crisis shifted elsewhere.”

Justin Simon from new group Sydney YIMBY – an organisation which has recently caused a stir in Sydney’s inner-city with their vocal opposition to the excesses of heritage protection – highlighted Woollahra’s limited contribution to the city’s housing supply.

“Woollahra’s current housing target amounts to 80 dwellings a year, and this drops to 40 dwellings per year from 2026. This contrasts with Blacktown which has to deliver over 1000 dwellings per year,” Simon said.

The LGA has recently come under fire for its resistance to new housing developments. The Sydney Morning Herald reported last month that Woollahra Council has only delivered 23 new affordable homes in 14 years.

Simon asserted that Woollahra is prime territory for new housing developments.

“When we have just experienced the hottest July on record we need to be finding ways to fit more people closer to the coast, where summer temperatures are 10 degrees lower. Every apartment building that isn’t built in Woollahra leads to more tree and koala-clearing subdivisions on Sydney’s fringe.”

Simon said that the high level of canopy cover in the Woollahra LGA makes it one of the city’s leading LGAs when it comes to green spaces. Trees over three metres in height cover roughly 27 percent of the seaside region.

But this number does not match the figures seen for tree cover in the city’s leafy northern suburbs.

According to data from the Centre for Urban Research at RMIT University and Greener Spaces Better Places, Woollahra lost 1.8 percent of its urban forest cover between 2013 and 2020. By comparison, the City of Ryde, which lost the most significant portion of urban forest cover, saw a 6.9 percent fall in tree coverage. The City of Sydney, meanwhile, boosted its urban forest cover by 3 percent during the same time period.

Councillors and supporters defend the proposal

Woollahra councillors do not view the proposed planning provisions as an obstacle to housing supply and affordability in the LGA.

Describing the rate of tree canopy loss as “alarming”, Residents First Woollahra Councillor Harriet Price said, “to allow development without minimising its adverse environmental impacts is negligent in the extreme.”

“I’m not surprised developers aren’t happy,” Cr Grieve stated, “it’s about time there was some accountability attached to their massive profits.”

“When the choice is between liveable homes for residents and developer profits I will always choose residents.”

Cr Grieve said that the move is a vital intervention in an area where the planting of trees in public parks and the greening of streets cannot keep up with the shortfall occurring on private land. She stressed that the proposal was never intended as an anti-development instrument.

According to Woollahra Council’s draft Urban Forestry Strategy – an investigation examining the ways in which the local council can boost tree canopy cover on public land, currently on exhibition – the LGA needs to see 13,410 additional trees planted to meet the Council’s target of 30 percent canopy cover by 2050. Current research indicates that Woollahra Council has the capacity to plant 8,101 of these trees on public land, if it proceeds at a planting rate 2.5 times the current ‘business as usual’ approach.

Cr Grieve said, “we simply don’t have enough space to plant enough trees to reach 30% canopy cover let alone the state target of 40% if we continue to lose the private canopy at the current rate,” she said.

Cr Robertson indicated that the Greens see 35 percent canopy cover as “a starting point”.

Local resident Karin Vesk, who views the planning law alterations as a positive step forward, wants to see more council intervention. In conversation with City Hub, she provided an alternative spoken map of Woollahra, marked by private tree loss and anguish – “the Danny Avidan moonscape carved into Piper Piper”, “the unforgiveable destruction of magnificent trees and an apartment at 34 Kent Road, Rose Bay”, and so on.

“Trees come down left, right and centre”, she stated.

Residents and activists in the eastern suburbs have undertaken a series of failed campaigns to protect trees in the area in recent years.

Most notoriously, in late 2022, the Royal Sydney Golf Course (RSGC), an elite water-guzzling institution often perceived as a bastion of old-wealth conservatism and nepotism, succeeded in gaining permission to remove 595 native trees including towering Moreton Bay figs, despite prolonged and intense community outcry and internal division among club members. The tree-felling is part of a redevelopment project which will clear fairways, enable better access for television crews and drones and increase the course’s usage for international tournaments.

Vesk told City Hub, “the RSCG’s DA approval process is the perfect illustration of a broken planning system and the power of money.”

She asserted that fellow locals share her desire for a greener neighbourhood, telling City Hub that “every shocked dog walker and local I talk to about RSCG shares this perspective”.

Cr Robertson puts it succinctly: “the best time to plant a tree was twenty years ago.”