AFTER a four-year battle, victorious Uvongo residents who appealed against the controversial rezoning of Lot 1959 in Alamein Road are ecstatic.
The KwaZulu-Natal Planning and Development Appeal Tribunal has ruled in their favour. It has upheld their appeals against the rezoning, by Hibiscus Coast Municipality, of the property from ‘agriculture’ to a split zoning, comprising ‘light industry’ and ‘conservation’.
The industrial activities taking place on Lot 1959, zoned ‘agriculture’, have long been a highly contentious issue in that area. The owners operate a construction company, Siva Pillay Construction, from there and store and maintain many heavy vehicles on the property. Neighbours have complained bitterly about the disruption this has caused.
In June 2013, they contacted their ward councillor Peter Naude, expressing concerns about the noise, the mess, the oil and diesel pollution, the damage done to the roads by increased heavy traffic and the negative affect the activities had on property values in the area.
“I was horrified by this illegal operation. The following month the municipality served an order on Siva Pillay Construction, prohibiting the construction company from operating from Lot 1059. It was ignored, as was another order, served by a Port Shepstone attorney a few months later,” said Cllr Naude.
Eventually, the construction company agreed to vacate the property but was given an extension, allowing it to continue working from there, as the owner of the property had applied for rezoning.
The rezoning was eventually granted, but not without great opposition. The municipality had received 23 objections to the rezoning and 39 residents had signed a petition against it being rezoned. One of the objections came from Ivungu River Conservancy, expressing great concern about the threat of pollution posed by oil and diesel spills to the Ivungu River and other sensitive areas.
At the relevant portfolio meeting, consensus could not be reached and it was put to the vote. When it reached the executive committee, it was again opposed and went to the vote. One of the executive committee councillors, Dave Watson, said he’d been astonished that it had even been considered . He opposed the spot zoning, which he said went against the municipality’s spatial development framework.
“The item was fatally flawed and shouldn’t have even been considered,” he said.
The objectors then turned to the KwaZulu-Natal Planning and Development Appeal Tribunal for relief. At the tribunal hearing, presided over by Thulani Nkosi in Durban last week, town planning consultancy Plankonsult appeared for the objectors who had lodged the appeal.
The respondents were Hibiscus Coast Municipality and town planning consultant Earl Bishop representing Siva Pillay Construction.
While objectors had recorded many reasons why they were unhappy about the rezoning, the tribunal cut to the chase. It upheld the appeal against the rezoning on the grounds that Hibiscus Coast Municipality was precluded from approving the application for rezoning lot 1959 in the first place. This was because the application proposal was in conflict with the municipality’s integrated development plan, a component of which was its spatial development framework.
The tribunal deferred the issue of legal costs for argument to a date to be determined by the registrar, on application by the appellants.
With the appeal tribunal hearing going in their favour, objectors said they were relieved and grateful that justice had at last been served.
They thanked Thys Blom of Plankonsult and Dieter Wortmann for all the work they had done to ensure a satisfactory outcome.
Dave Halle of the South Coast Conservation Forum, commended chairman Charles Carr and members of the Ivungu River Conservancy for their good work and said the success of the appeal against the rezoning was also a victory for conservation.
