Council is currently reviewing its planning scheme (Fraser Coast Planning Scheme 2014). As part of the project, Council is undertaking a number of projects and background studies to inform proposed changes to the Planning Scheme. The Onsite Sewage Facilities project is one of those projects. The project addresses the following issues:

• Cumulative public health and environmental impacts as a result of non-compliant onsite sewage facilities andonsite sewage facilities that are not correctly maintained;
• Historic lots that have difficulty accommodating compliant onsite sewage facility systems; and
• The creation of new unsewered lots which, given our regions risk factors (e.g. soil types, slope, etc), struggle to meet onsite sewage facility requirements.

Council engaged a consultant (Simmonds and Bristow) in August 2021 to undertake the project over a 12 month period. The background report prepared by the consultant provides an overview of the project to date and proposed land use planning solutions to:

• Avoid the risk in the first place by requiring connection to reticulated sewerage where servicing is feasible;
• Increase the size of new unsewered residential lots to 3,000m²to ensure adequate area is available to accommodate future onsite sewage facilities and mitigate cumulative environmental and public health impacts;
• Bring forward onsite sewage facility considerations to the development assessment process to ensure people buying lots don't design their dream homes, sheds, pools, etc and leave onsite sewage facilities until their last consideration;
• Provide guidance on achieving improved development outcomes where onsite sewage facilities are utilised.

Note - the new requirements do not duplicate the Plumbing and Drainage Act 2018 requirements.

You can download and read the reports and the proposed changes from this project under Key Documents to the right of this page.

We welcome your feedback on the draft outputs.