Elanora Heights and Ingleside residents opposed to a planning proposal submitted to Council in recent months said it will put lives at risk in the event of a bushfire.
Public submissions on the proposal end tomorrow 1 December.
Mirvac Homes (NSW) Pty Ltd (Mirvac) and Ingleside Wilga Developments Pty Ltd (Truslan) are seeking consent to rezone the site from RU2 Rural Landscape to R3 Medium Density Residential, RE1 Public Recreation and C2 Environmental Conservation for future development of the site. If the rezoning is permitted, it will make way for a potential 536 dwellings.
Within the site, there are 19 lots, with Mirvac owning four (21 per cent) and Truslan owning three lots (16 per cent). The remaining lots are privately owned (except for one lot, which is owned by the Serbian Orthodox Church) and residents told Manly Observer those owners were surprised to hear about the planning proposal.
“We’re not anti-housing – we’re pro-safety and sensible planning,” said local resident and Elanora Heights Residents Association spokesperson, Dick Clarke.
“You can’t safely add 1,000 more cars to a single bushfire evacuation road.
“Powderworks Road can already get jammed in peak hour — imagine trying to flee a fire. This proposal ignores the same safety warnings that caused the 2022 plan to be abandoned.”
Mr Clarke also worries this is a “Trojan horse” for the rest of the precinct after the 2022 Ingleside Place Strategy was abandoned by the Department of Planning, Housing and Infrastructure (DPHI) after fierce local criticism and warnings from the Rural Fire Service that bushfire evacuation modelling for Powderworks Road was incomplete, infrastructure costs were prohibitive, and biodiversity impacts remained unresolved.
“Ingleside is not the place for this kind of development,” Mr Clarke added.
Instead, local residents told Manly Observer they would be happy for the area to be rezoned to R2 Low-Density Residential, which would fit in with the surrounding area.
They pointed to Narrabeen which is zoned for low-density and environmentally sensitive redevelopment, and urged Council and the State Government to apply consistent planning standards, particularly with Ingleside and Elanora Heights facing greater bushfire risks.
From farms to apartments
The proposal is to amend the zoning from RU2 Rural Landscape to R3 Medium Density to provide opportunity for developers like Mirvac. It’s worth nothing the streets neighbouring the site are zoned as RU2 or R2 Low Density; therefore, this rezoning and potential development, if approved, would be unique for the area.
The plans within the proposal show a development of 536 dwellings, from attached dwellings to multi-dwelling housing to residential flat buildings.
Proposed building heights range from 8.5m to 24m.
“The plan in the online documents is only an idea,” Local resident Verity Hinwood explained.
“If the rezoning goes ahead, they could put towers everywhere.”
Mirvac told us they have held land in the Ingleside area since 2013, when the state government at the time committed to rezoning the precinct.
“We’ve worked with planning authorities to develop a proposal that responds to safety and environmental considerations, including the Department of Planning’s release of a revised Ingleside Land Use & Infrastructure Strategy, which reduced the number of potential future homes from around 3,000 to 980, all south of Mona Vale Road,” a Mirvac spokesperson said.
“In line with this, our proposal seeks to enable much-needed new housing, with a mixture of mid-rise apartments, attached, semi-detached and free-standing homes, that will help young families stay in the area and support an ageing population. The proposal includes environmental conservation works, open space, and new walking trails.
“This is an early step in a longer planning process, with further opportunities for community and stakeholder input to come.”
Jacqui Scruby, MP for Pittwater, said the Wilga Wilson proposal is overdevelopment of rural land by a developer who doesn’t own all the subject land.
“I’m a staunch advocate for local planning being driven through processes like the Local Environment Plan and local strategic planning undertaken by Council and with engagement of our community,” she said.
“This rezoning proposal is entirely developer-led. It undermines our community planning framework, ignores previous bushfire-risk decisions for the area, and lacks any genuine strategic justification.
“This proposal should be rejected. Northern Beaches Council – not private developers – should be leading the strategic planning for Pittwater.”
The risk of a bushfire
In the Strategic Bushfire Study, commissioned for the planning proposal, BlackAsh Bushfire Consulting approved the proposal from a bushfire safety perspective and said the proposal meets all the required standards set out in NSW’s bushfire planning guidelines.
However, in an attached letter from the Rural Fire Service (RFS), RFS notes that Powderworks Road and Mona Vale Road are not suitable for safe evacuation as parts of the road go through bushland.
“While new roads are proposed within the Wilga Wilson Precinct, these roads do not connect the proposed lots to surrounding areas to provide additional safe evacuation routes for occupants,” the RFS letter said.
“It is anticipated that the proposed roads… will be utilised by both emergency vehicles and evacuating residents from existing residential developments and the proposed precinct.”
Within the traffic assessment, the report said the road network (mainly traffic heading southeast on Powderworks Road) should have enough capacity to get everyone out safely if a bushfire threatens the area.
But esidents who lived through the January 1994 bushfires arenervous.
Wilga Wilson bushfire damage in Elanora Heights. Image: Northern Beaches Library Local StudiesFour of Robert Nuss’ neighbours lost their homes in that fire.
“The only reason mine didn’t go was because I was up all night putting out spot fires,” he told us.
“The fire came from the west, through the National Park and when I looked up the hill, there were cannon balls of fire launching through the sky coming at us.”
While it’s been 31 years since the 1994 fires, it continues to be on local residents’ minds as they review the planning proposal, particularly with recent wet weather causing an increase in vegetation in the National Park.
“Powderworks Road is a single road, which leads on to Mona Vale Road which is another single road, and this development, without proper evacuation routes, is dangerous and could get people killed,” Mr Nuss added.
His wife, LouAnne Nuss agreed.
“There is no right to put people at risk,” she said.
“Developers need to do the right thing here.”
Local residents added that Ingleside’s water infrastructure could run dry in the next bushfire emergency and the proposed rezoning and development would only make the situation worse.
Residents said the area relies on a single reservoir on Maclean Street, which ran dry during the 1994 bushfires, leaving residents without water to fight the flames.
“Adding hundreds of new dwellings will dramatically increase demand,” Mr Clarke said.
“There is no way anyone can guarantee that after several days of extreme heat and high demand, the reservoir won’t run dry again. Without new capacity, this proposal is reckless.”
Sydney Water said firefighting water systems are designed by developers and assessed separately from drinking water.
This is not a brand-new idea
DPHI developed a draft Ingleside Land Use and Infrastructure Implementation Plan in 2016. It planned for 3,400 dwellings; however, after public exhibition and a report recognising the potential for Ingleside to be exposed to extreme catastrophic bushfire risk, and concerns about the ability to evacuate safely in the event of a bushfire, the plan was discontinued.
In 2022, DPHI developed the Ingleside Place Strategy, which planned for 980 dwelling south of Mona Vale Road in an area of around 180 hectares.
After 1,000 public submissions (almost all against) the Strategy was shelved after bushfire evacuation modelling for Powderworks Road was found to be incomplete, among other issues.
The planning for Ingleside was then handed over to Council. Under Council’s draft planning laws (which will go on exhibition in the future), Council explained they want to keep Ingleside, including the Wilga Wilson area, as RU2 Rural Landscape due to the bushfire risk.
Council will assess the Wilga Wilson proposal based on how the developers propose to manage the bushfire risk with the increase in population and development.
Despite being smaller, with only 536 homes, residents said that the Wilga Wilson plan has the same key risk factors, such as limited evacuation routes, proximity to bushland and two National Parks, and reliance on outdated infrastructure, are the same.
A petition against the development is attracting signatories – at the time of publication, there were just over 1,000 signatures. (You can see the petition here.)
The planning proposal is on exhibition until tomorrow, 1 December 2025. You can find more details here.
