The Snowy Monaro Regional Council has proposed a Rural Land Use Strategy that includes re-zoning of rural land across our region which will place significant limits on management and use of the land and will introduce more red tape for landowners. The strategy also massively increases the minimum lot size for building a house across most of the region, and removes lot averaging that today allows people with multiple lots to combine them when looking to build.  It does so contrary to the advice of the community reference group established after the community rejected the previous version with similar problems.

This radical strategy will have a significant impact on land values and the wider economy. It has potential to impoverish many families whose property values could fall below what they paid for them.  

This is not what we elected the current Council to do and it needs to be stopped!!!

Please read the strategy at the Council website and then sign the petition if you agree with me that it should be stopped.

If we must have a new strategy, it must:

1. Not increase Minimum Lot Sizes for dwelling approvals.

2. Support agriculture product diversification by setting Minimum Lot Sizes for dwelling approval in all land currently zoned RU1 at 40 hectares.

3. Not rezone rural land to environmental or RU2 zones without individual land owner agreement.

4. Harmonise labels use rules by adopting all current land uses for RU zoned land in the current LEPs that do not require consent in any of existing three LEPs.

5. Support diversification by adoption of open land use options for rural land for allowable uses with consent.

6. Retain lot averaging in the former Cooma shire and adopt it everywhere else. This will allow landowners to build on unproductive areas of land and provide additional housing so desperately needed.

7. Protect the equity of land owners with property on crown roads by ensuring building entitlements are not removed.