Local Amenities Improvement Levy

Section 94 Indirect Development Contributions

In accordance with the provisions of the Sevtion 94A(1) of the Environment Planning and Assessment Act 1979 and The Strathfield Indirect Developmebt Contributions Plan 2010-30, a contribution has to be made to the council. If a Quantuty Surveyor report is not provided then based on Rawlinson's Costruction Cost Guide, the council determines this contribution which is almost the double the amount. And as a result, the owner is bound to produce the Quantity Surveyor report. 

This levy is 1% of the total build cost of the house. Now there is a contention here between the builders and the council. According to the builder this amount should be the total contract price which has been signed between the builder and the owner of the house. But on the contrary according to the Council, this figure should be the total cost of the build including all the internal variations. Just to make it worse the council makes it mandatory now to provide them the cost estimate of all the build costs in the form of Quantuiy Surveyor report which should be certified by a registered Quantity Surveyor who should be prescribed by the Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyors (RICS) and  they should be members of the Australian Institute of Quantity Surveyors. Now this is costly affair as it costs money for that kind of report and also does not make sense if someone is ready to show all the variations and the contract prices. I was willing to show and produce all the contracts signed by us 

with METRICON, but Council had its own agenda and we were asked to produce the Quantity Surveyor report. This is something like one wants to prove TRUTH to be the TRUTH. I am sure that all these contracts signed by the both parties are legally bound contracts and should be considered as such. This is another example of council's hard handedness... But having said all this, I presume they are making rules so that the costs are not shown under and there is another check on if there is any costs which could not be justifiable by the builders. 

I hope it will be sorted out when we are able to produce the report. 

If anyone else is in the same situation, here is our Surveyor's details:

Steve Lunniss

Steve Lunniss BSc (QS) MRICS AAIQS

Director

TSL Project Services Pty Ltd - Chartered Quantity Surveyors

Phone - 1300 792 360

www.tslprojectservices.com.au

Before and After...

It is interesting to capture how our home was earlier on and how it looked when things started being taken away and unltimately it being demolished. Here are some of the photos to signify this:

Here are the after image photos:

And rest of the photos are already inluded in the Demolition post.

Council Approval for Prunning At Last!!!

So there comes a letter today in the post confirming that the Council has approved for prunning and not for the removal of the tree in our neighbour's property. It does not make sense why they took so long as to gie this kind of a decision. If this was their decision they would given this on the very first instance and not wasted our two months. It would have been sane to provide us the approval for the tree as it does not belong there on the fence. It would be a nuisance in years to come for both the properties.

Anyway, it gives us some peace of mind as now we can move on with our CDC approval.

Demolition

We have organised our Demolition and which is in progress as I am wrting all this. Provided there is no drama, this will finish soon as well and the site will be prepared by State Demolitions for the building to start. There was this strange feeling when the whole house was being dismantled. There was a tinge of excitement but there was an element of sadness as well about the house. Somehow I had liked my house although it was old. That is such a strange feeling having a connection between an inanimate object and the human heart. Soon it will disappear from the place...

Here are some of the demolition photos:

Moving to a Rental Place

In the mean time we have found a rental place that we need to move to on 19th Jan 2013. So packing is in the process. It took most of our Christmas holidays and I was surprised that this time it took so long for ourselves to get organised because we had accumulated so much rubbish in the garage. The garage is done and inside the house, loundry and kitchen, linen cupboards, bedrooms are all done. De-cluttering was a major desired outcome of this whole exercise and we are so glad to  have got ridden of so much cloths, books, magazines, toys and other things that we never have been using. We are sure that it would be good for the Charities Boxes as well as we had a few trips to put in our stuff there. We had two Council Wastes Pickup organised. It will be a good feeling when we move into the new rental place with less things. We are so surprised that we were carrying so much of baggage till now.

We are planning to keep outdoor furniture, all garden tools at one of my friend's place. He has got a huge space in his house that he has offered us to use. That is so wonderful of him. I think we should be able to use the study, dining table at the new apartment that we are moving to, but I need to de-assemble them all and pack them first and that is kind of an exercise.

In a Limbo...

We have got one of the big hurdles. Our proposed new home needs pruning of the neighbour's tree which hangs into our property unfortunately. The neighbours actually have agreed to remove it and they have applied to the council. But because of the  X-mas holidays, the approver officer has not come back and that is why the whole thing is on hold. And when he comes back there will be a pile of applications to look after so I wonder how long this will take. Next week I need to phone back to the Council and request for prioritisation on our application if possible. The application was
submitted on 21st Dec 2012, just before the X-mas holidays started.

That is why it is said that the 'Man proposes and God disposes!'.

A Few Good News...

The Demolition certification has been approved and delivered to us. All the variation that we needed inside and outside the house have been completed. I had talked to my Metricon contact and I was told that the CDC approval for the house is just waiting on the Tree removal/Pruning approval. Rest of the tasks are completed. We had a
hiccup at one stage about the storm water management and I was able to negotiate for having two 3000L rain tanks instead of the underground 10000L tank. This negotiation took its toll on time by almost 3 weeks. But at the end it worked out ok in our favour. In the process we lost another 5k for additional tank and additional underground power run to meter box situated on the side elevation of the garage.