HERITAGE AND YOUR DEVELOPMENT
The term heritageis often misused or misunderstood. To many people, owning or having property near a heritage building or within a heritage place would seem an unnecessary burden preventing them from doing the things they want to do with their property.
This is not necessarily so. Council likes to ensure that the special places in our region are able to remain occupied, maintained and well managed so that they may be appreciated now and in the future as looking glasses into our past.
Lists of the heritage items within the Port Macquarie-Hastings are available from:
- Council, or
- Port Macquarie-Hastings LEP 2011- Schedule 5 and the Heritage Map (22 map sheets), or
- search of the NSW Heritage Listings.
Once the character and significance of a place or in the case of a building or item, the context, setting and significance are known and are clearly defined, the impact or effect of changes to that place, building or item can be predicted.
This information and analysis will need to be formalised as a report referred to as a Statement of Heritage Impact.
This report shall be prepared in the form prescribed by the Heritage Office of NSW, in their publication Statements of Heritage Impact, Department of Urban Affairs and Planning and Heritage Office of NSW, 1996.
This publication identifies the format, the issues to be addressed and the nature of the conservation policy document required for various types of developments in or around Heritage items.
When a proposal for alterations, additions, demolition or other development is being prepared for: a building of heritage significance; a building in a conservation area or within the historic curtilage of a heritage item; a provisional heritage item or within in the vicinity of a heritage place or item, then an assessment of significance and of the possible heritage impacts mustbe considered and formalised in a report accompanying the Statement of Environmental Effects.
Processing of your Development Application will be delayedwithout an accompanying assessment of the heritage impacts presented in the prescribed format. In the case of items of State Significance, the application will be referred to the Heritage Office of NSW as integrated development, for assessment by their specialist staff.
