Why is the City doing a Landscape Assessment around Big Hill and Mandurang Valley?

Preserving the landscape around Big Hill and Mandurang aligns with our strategic directions:

Greater Bendigo Council Plan (Mr Wimbul) 2021-2025. Action to “Scope a Gateway Study for Big Hill and Mandurang landscape preservation”.

Greater Bendigo Planning Scheme. Clause 02.03-2 to protect significant landscapes such as the Big Hill Range.

This assessment will build on the original assessment published in 2013.

The study area runs from Harcourt North in the South up to parts of Strathdale in the north. It runs across to Ravenswood and Lockwood South in the west. We extended the study area to align with the peer review undertaken by Claire Scott Planning in 2017.

A Significant Landscape Overlay is a planning control.

It is used to

• identify
• conserve and
• enhance the character of landscapes considered significant

The overlay contains planning permit requirements for certain types of work. This intends to avoid or minimise negative impacts on significant landscapes.

Significant Landscape Overlays can limit certain types of works and development. They are not intended to 'lock out’ future development.

In 2012, we spoke to people who live in, work in, or visit Big Hill and Mandurang. The community consultation included:

• face-to-face workshops
• pocket survey
• community bulletins and
• a community photographic exercise

We used this information in Bendigo Landscape Assessment report produced in 2013.

We would like your input on the revised ‘Community Values’ component of the study from 2013. We want to verify and update those values. The updated community values will help us to:

• Revise the landscape values
• Better understand some of the issues
• Revise the landscape management framework

Much of the original landscape assessment work remains valuable and relevant. It forms an important foundation to the current project. When we submitted the original Planning Scheme Amendment, it was unsuccessful. The panel report identified gaps and issues we needed to address first.

We are doing this extra assessment work to address those issues.

We will analyse your feedback and incorporate it into the landscape assessment report. Then the City’s consultants will produce a revised landscape management framework. After that, the City will likely make a recommendation to Council to:

• adopt the final report.
• prepare and exhibit a new planning scheme amendment with Significant Landscape Overlays over parts of the study area