Missing Middle Housing planning reforms - what we said

We made a submission to the EPSDD planners on their proposals for reforming planning rules for the Missing Middle of housing - adding dwellings, townhouses, apartments, multiunit developments - in the RZ1 suburban housing zones.

Here’s what we submitted in July 2025.

Missing Middle Planning Changes

Overall, the WVCC has strong concerns about whether the proposed planning changes will achieve its desired policy outcomes of more affordable housing in the suburbs and build sufficient housing in a short period. 

Moreover, the WVCC is concerned that the proposed changes fail to recognise the need for more community infrastructure in the context of an increased population.

The Woden Valley Community will be affected by the proposed changes

The WVCC represents residents and organisations located in the Woden Valley. This includes suburbs stretching from Isaacs and Mawson in the south to Hughes and Curtin in the north. A large swathe of the Woden Valley and its suburbs is currently zoned as RZ1, which is the subject of proposed Missing Middle changes.

The Woden Valley Community expressed strong interest in the proposed Missing Middle changes, and the WVCC’s consultation has noted the proposed changes will directly affect a large part of the community.

The WVCC acknowledges the need for Zoning Changes.

The WVCC believes the proposed changes to RZ1 zoning are needed. RZ1 covers around 80% of the urban area of the ACT so RZ1 usage has a major impact on the design of the community and on the ACT’s natural environment. The WVCC is concerned however, about what the actual impact of the changes will be.

Likely effect of the changes in practice

Woden Valley suburbs were built from the late 1960s into the 1980s, so 50 years later many homes are at a stage where homeowners are considering options to rebuild, renovate or extend their house.  

A relevant example of how the missing middle changes could end up working in practice is Hurley Street, Mawson. Hurley St was originally built with single residences and a reasonable proportion of government housing. Hurley St and other streets adjacent to it were rezoned to RZ2, I think around 2000 – as part of the TPV200, the Garden City Variation changes.  

As a result of the changes, properties were rebuilt, and very few remained as the original modest single residences. Most blocks were rebuilt with 2 or 3 four-bedroom ‘luxury-style’ townhouses. In a few instances, blocks were consolidated and up to 6 townhouses were built on what was originally 2 blocks with 2 three-bedroom houses. The new dwellings are considerably larger than the houses they replaced. The new townhouses are not affordable, and each townhouse cost more than the older modest house they replaced.  Other blocks have had the original modest three-bedroom house demolished and replaced by very large ‘McMansions’.

In Hurley St and the rest of Woden, there has not been an increase in affordable housing, tree canopy or open space as a result of redevelopment of existing RZ1 blocks. There has been an increase in parking in the street and hard surfaces. The new units have higher EER ratings but as they are a lot larger, the decrease in energy use has not been as high. There has been a whole house worth of demolished building materials which largely have gone to land fill. There has been an even larger quantity of building materials imported from outside the ACT to build the new building. These imported materials are not counted in the ACT’s greenhouse gas inventory.

Consultation

The Directorate formerly known as EPSDD has clearly put a lot of resources into consultation both online and in person – thank you.

However, EPSDD has not been prepared to run any town hall style meetings. In particular, they have refused to engage with the community councils to assist or facilitate this style of community consultation beyond an initial briefing session to the councils. Town hall meetings where people can see and hear what their fellow Canberrans are saying are very useful for helping people get a better understanding of how the potential changes could affect them. 

The ACT government established and funded community councils to assist in consultation with the community and it is sad to see the government ignore the councils in this regard. The WVCC is concerned that a more one-on-one and restrictive style of engagement was selected in lieu of any town hall style community consultation to reduce the diversity of thought and information sharing opportunities, and to stifle discussion within our communities. Given the possible widespread nature of the changes this is particularly disappointing. 

Draft Major Plan Amendment to the Territory Plan

The WVCC supports most of these amendments which aim to give more flexibility in the use of RZ1 land. A potentially important change is to allow subdivision and block consolidation. In some instances this will be very beneficial as the original block layout was designed for different land uses.

The WVCC also supports the: 

• Reduced minimum block area for 2 dwellings or secondary residences

• Increased maximum dwelling numbers on a block.

We support these only in conjunction with rules to preserve the natural environment and residential amenities, and provide infrastructure, including transport, schools and community facilities that cater for the additional population growth.

We do not support the reduction in setbacks and building envelope protection in the draft legislation and design guides. If these protections are reduced, then the case to reduce controls on dwelling numbers is a lot less. 

We are unsure about what ‘Block subdivision permitted where a dwelling has been lawfully constructed’ means in the context of unit titling. We do support allowing unit titling or subdivision where it can be made to work with existing dwellings even if they were originally built without permission, as long as the dwellings can be upgraded to meet building and planning requirements.

Design guides 

To make these changes to the Territory Plan work, the buildings must be well designed. The government has produced additional documents to give guidance about what it wants to be built. They are the Technical Specifications and the relevant Design Guides. These documents are guidance, not law, and are therefore non-binding to those developers that may choose to ignore them.  

The text in these documents is very positive. Page 7 of the ACT Missing Middle Housing Design Guide has the missing middle design principles:

1. Respond to neighbourhood context and character to create a sense of identity and reflect local styles.

2. Contribute to healthy and safe communities through well designed streets and communal spaces.

3. Encourage sustainable design practices that optimise resource and energy efficiencies and minimise impact on the natural environment.

4. Support housing diversity and community needs by providing a mix of different housing typologies.

If these 4 principles are all achieved then the missing middle changes will be a success. However, the WVCC doubts that the reality will live up to the promotional words.  

We do not have the capacity to comment on all the technical and design guide contents. This submission only covers some of the most obvious issues.

Changes we support

• We support allowing apartments in RZ1. This will enable more single level residences and help aging in place. These apartments may need a lift system to enable older or less mobile people to live there.

• We support removing the minimum block size for secondary dwellings subject to the strict adherence to site coverage requirements etc such as tree canopy, planting area, solar access and overlook. 

• We support allowing cohousing in all RZ1 blocks, subject to the strict adherence to site coverage requirements such as those controls identified above.

• We support not specifying a maximum number of dwellings per block, instead allowing this to be governed by the strict adherence to the general site controls such as those identified above.

• We support increasing the tree canopy requirements from 15% to 20%.  However it appears that this increase is being used to divert attention from the actual reduction in planting area; see our comments on that below. Trees need planting space to grow in. Tree canopy areas can be put in the plans by the landscape architect but it will be 10–20 years or longer before the trees grow to full size. At that point it will be too late to fix any lack in tree canopy.

Changes we are unsure about

The changes in car parking requirements are complicated. Ideally there would be adequate public and active transport so that residents could genuinely live without owning a car, and visitors would not need to come by car. Most of Canberra’s suburbs are not like that however and it is important that residents and visitors to these areas have adequate parking. Possibly the rules could incentivize car parks that later can be used for other purposes when public transport improves?

Making this a harder problem is that if there is inadequate parking provided, all the neighbourhood may be affected as existing parking spaces are used by the new development. So the existing residents get the pain without any gain to them.

Changes we do not support

WVCC does NOT support some changes. These are the changes that will contribute to creating an environment which lacks open green space, reduces the space for the natural environment, reduces solar access for adjacent buildings and reduces privacy to neighbouring properties.

• We do NOT support reducing the planting area from 35% to 30%. This will increase the urban heat island effect and reduce the space for environmental uses as well as human enjoyment.

• We do not object to reduced private open space as long as there is good, usable communal open space. However there does not seem to be any assurance of this.

• The change in the building envelope so it is measured at 4m above the boundary, not 3.5m as well as the reduction in front and side setbacks will enable larger dwellings.

• The change in solar building envelope angle from 31 degrees to 45 degrees will increase overshadowing and reduce residential amenity.  It will also make it harder to have usable open space as more will be in shade most of the time.

• Moving of the building heights (heights in metres) from the Territory Plan (legally binding) into the Planning Technical Specifications (non legally binding), but leaving the building heights in storeys in the Territory Plan. This enables greater building heights to be achieved in metres (not legally binding), for the same number of storeys (the legally binding component). This may be detrimental to the surrounding properties by creating privacy and overlooking concerns. However there will be no way to object to or change the design, in our now outcomes-based design provisions.

RZ2, RZ3 changes

As far as the changes for RZ2 and RZ3, we have no comments except in the RZ2 areas where RZ1 changes will be allowed there. Our comments for RZ1 would then be relevant to RZ2.

Finances, cost, affordability and timeliness

The proposed Missing Middle changes will be most viable in inner established areas where land values are high, blocks are bigger and houses older and smaller. The WVCC thinks that in most cases Missing Middle redevelopment will only be viable if either the existing house needs very major renovation and thus will be demolished anyway, or the home owner has a non-financial motivation.  

These would likely be family support such as accommodating an aged parent or disabled family member. For many of these developments existing granny flat/secondary dwelling rules would be adequate if there was the option to unit title the block into 2 units.

It is interesting to see the step-by-step guide for property owners in the Missing Middle Housing Design Guide. We assume that this reflects the government's expectation of the likely uptake of the Missing Middle Housing reforms in practice.

If that analysis is correct, it will take decades for the missing middle reforms to change the building through the suburbs. They are unlikely to be a major source of new affordable housing.

The consultation document does not consider the financial aspects of redevelopment. Given the siloed nature of the ACT government this is not surprising. However, it is the finances that will largely determine whether or not any of these planning changes are acted on. The WVCC hopes that even if the government is not prepared to share its financial modelling with the public, it has done some. The WVCC suggests that the government should share its modelling about the likely uptake of the plans and the barriers to adopting the new regulations.

The WVCC suggests that the rate of land variation charges (LVC) should be considered as a part of ways to increase affordable medium density housing stock.  In particular LVC could be adjusted to promote social and affordable housing.

It is our expectation that as in Woden under current RZ2 rules and ACT-wide with the ‘Mr Fluffy’ blocks, most of the dwellings constructed under these rules will be large and unaffordable to the low and average income Canberrans. This of course is due to many factors such as cost of construction and the taxation arrangements for property ownership and rental. However it is disappointing that the ACT government has produced a new scheme which is unlikely to significantly increase housing supply or affordability in Canberra.

Possible other changes to increase affordable housing 

The missing middle rules are all about putting more and bigger buildings in our suburban areas. 

However the WVCC would like to see an emphasis on affordable housing, urban amenity and preservation/enhancement of the natural environment. We would like to see an emphasis on good use of the resources embodied in our existing housing stock. This policy does not do that. It will encourage knock down/rebuild of houses that are still usable. We would like to see an environmental analysis of the program including the impact of the demolition and supply of new building materials.

For a more timely source of additional affordable housing, the WVCC suggests the ACT government should look at ways to make better use of our existing housing stock. Older areas of Canberra have an abundance of larger houses where the children have left home and the spouse has died, leaving a widow/er who does not want to leave the family home.

In some cases, these homes could be shared which would benefit the existing resident with more support for household maintenance and possibly financial and social support. It could provide affordable housing to the other person.

The most significant barrier to this is lack of understanding of the option and support for the home owner. Providing a service to support older homeowners to share large homes was part of the 2016 Parliamentary agreement between the Greens and the ALP. It was never implemented in the ACT but has been in other states.

Taxation arrangements are a substantial deterrent to house sharing. In the ACT the owner could be charged land tax on part of the building. They would lose part of the capital gains tax exemption and any rental income could reduce Centrelink income if applicable. The ACT government could clarify the land tax issues with shared houses.

A targeted loan program, to be paid back when the house was sold, could be available for minor renovations such as an upgraded bathroom or kitchen or additional door.

Another quicker and cheaper source of new housing is tiny homes. These can be prefabricated and moved into place comparatively cheaply.  They have become a normal part of housing in some parts of Australia. They could be put on RZ1 blocks now instead of waiting for a new $500,000 plus Missing Middle development to be feasible.

The WVCC does not suggest that these ideas will solve all the issues of affordable housing, community development and preservation – even enhancement – of the natural environment. We do see them as part of the solution.