No justification to breach statutory standards

Ms Scarfe's letter on the Sporties proposal is quite extraordinary ("Residents could have made events viable", April 9).

She seems to feel that the community has an obligation to attend events in which there is clearly little interest, in order to support the maintenance of a club for a few members who benefit from a favourable use arrangement over community property.

Apparently, when the members can no longer manage their own club, the community is then supposed to waive its development standards to bail out this non-viable operation and allow a developer to make a substantial profit at everybody else's expense.

If the club cannot attract enough members to maintain its own operations, it is clearly not serving a useful purpose.

In such a case, the community land should revert to the control of Council and be reallocated for activities for which there is a community demand.

Alternatively, if the land is to be developed, the development profit should accrue to the community at large.

In no case is there any justification for breaching the statutory standards that apply to the site or for permitting a building density that will adversely affect neighbours.

Email, 10 Apr 2018

Bruce Hyland, Woy Woy