Albany council keen to hear from public on opening the door for tourism ventures in rural agricultural areas

A new City of Albany policy that would pave the way for small-scale and low-impact tourism ventures to be established in rural and priority agricultural areas will face a public comment period. Albany council unanimously voted in favour of giving the public an opportunity to comment on the draft local planning policy, which aims to encourage “small-scale low impact tourism accommodation uses in rural areas” where they are compatible. At Tuesday’s meeting Cr Stephen Grimmer said he was “very much in favour” of the draft policy and that he believed it was “something that has been needed for some time”. “Out our way we have a lot of illegal camping around Cosy Corner and all the way through,” he said. “This provides an opportunity for smaller holdings and any people that live in the right area to have economic opportunity to have caravan parks on them, which is a fantastic thing. “I am very interested in going out to comment and seeing what those comments are before we adopt it.” Cr Robert Sutton said he had been “absolutely gobsmacked” by how many caravans there were on the road when returning from Exmouth this week. “You go into Exmouth and they are parked all around the ovals — anywhere you can park, they’ve parked,” he said. “On the way up and on the way back, I noted that a lot of the road houses have got exactly this, just a few areas so they can actually pop in carvaners who can’t quite make it to the next stop and they want to stay somewhere legal they can stay at a reasonable cost. “I believe it doesn’t affect caravan parks at all because it will be clientele they wouldn’t be getting anyway.” The eight-page draft policy includes detail about its five objectives, specifies the zones and type of accommodation it would apply to and sets limits for the size of accommodation offerings according to the size of a lot.