GRAAFF-REINET NEWS — In June 2016 the purchaser of the property 108 Somerset Street in Graaff-Reinet submitted a plan to build an outbuilding on land which is part of his property but is actually situated between 110 Somerset Street and 3 Jansen Street.

A trust, administered by a local resident, owns 110 Somerset Street, and the Jansen Street property belongs to Union High School and is where the headmaster lives.

The local Heritage Society wrote a letter to the municipality protesting that the proposed building was not in keeping with the residential nature of the heritage area, but is an industrial type of building. In the letter is was raised that the scale and general appearance of this type of utilitarian structure is more suitable for agricultural or industrial areas, and that it will impact negatively on the townscape of this exclusively residential area.

According to a representative of the Heritage Society, no response was received from the municipality.

The administrator of the trust was asked by the owner to go to the municipality to approve the plans, but when he got there, he found that the municipality had already approved them. He and UHS then objected to the plans.

 The municipality made the owner scale down the height of the new building to the height of the house already on the property (which is apparently a legal requirement, even though the outbuilding is not next to the house), and he had to paint the breeze blocks. The building, which is 300m², was erected. It cannot be seen from 108 Somerset Street but the living room of the neighbouring 110 Somerset St looks on to it.

The building is like a shed, in which the owner says he plans to store his vintage cars.

In November last year the municipality passed the owner’s plans for a house at 1 Jansen Street where building is going on now. It looks like another industrial building but the plans show that the intention is to fill in the spaces between the steel girders with bricks. It seems that permission has also been given for a road through from the driveway of 108 Somerset to the Jansen Street property.

The owner of 16 Donkin Street who now has this road and the garage adjoining his property on the west and the new house on the north has at no time received any communication from the municipality about the plans. There appears to have been no concern for the degradation of the value of the surrounding properties, the environmental impact of a great deal of concrete and industrial roofing, or the comfort of the neighbours.

Recently, at the regular monthly meeting between the Aesthetics Committee of the Heritage Society and municipal officials (including outgoing building inspector Zuki Mdwane and her replacement Albert Marx), this matter was raised. A meeting was arranged between the owner of 108 Somerset Street and the municipal officials.

According to Zukiswa Mdwane, as the structure will be used for garaging motor vehicles (as an outbuilding), the owner had thought to employ sustainable methods that will require less maintenance to the outbuilding itself. Hence he used IBR sheets for cladding on gable walls as gable walls are susceptible to getting wet when it rains and require more maintenance. However, due to the objection, the owner is willing to change the cladding on gable walls and make it like the other houses within the horseshoe area.

One deviation is still the rooftop wind turbines which have been put and the owner has been notified of these wind turbines - however, due to the fact that there are other houses in close proximity to his house which have installed rooftop wind turbines, the owner has been hesitant to remove the ones on his structure.

The following response was received from Leolynn Smith, Communications Officer for the Dr Beyers Naude Municipality.

"One should note that a building plan does not run the same process as a land-use application such as rezoning, consolidation and subdivision. In the latter three, the application is advertised and opportunity is given for public participation. In the case of the former, the building plan is submitted, processed internally and gets approved or disapproved. The only opportunity where the plan is open for neighbours is when there is an encroachment, in that instance, the owner (and not the municipality) must obtain written approval from the affected neighbour (where the building line encroachment falls) as far as the building lines are concerned.

It is understood that with the first plan of the structure, the plan was approved without written consent of the neighbours (which are 110 Somerset Street and 3 Jansen Street). However, when the objections were received from the neighbours mentioned above, the objections were attended to and the approved plans were rescinded and the construction ceased. New plans were drawn up, which had been modified and were submitted. These were approved on June 17, 2016, with conditions: the size of the building to be decreased, the height of the roof also to be decreased to be the same as the roof height of adjoining properties. The instruction was to paint the building white and have the roof painted in the same way as the main roof (charcoal), to which the owner consented to and implemented. The second plan did not require permission from the neighbours as it was within the building lines.

A meeting was held between the municipality and the owner of the property on February 15 after an inspection of the property was conducted on February 7.

During the meeting, it was reconfirmed that the structure will be used by the owner for personal use, which is parking his personal vintage cars. The other space in the structure will be used by his children to park their cars when they visit as the houses on 1 Somerset Street and 1 Jansen Street are their townhouses. He committed that there will be no disruption in terms of noise levels that will bring unrest to the owners and occupants of the adjacent houses."

The noise from the building operations has however caused problems for the neighbours, as on several occasions building work has started well before the permitted 8am.

One neighbour at least is still not satisfied with the response. “The concerns around the visual impact of the structure, its inappropriateness in a residential area, its negative effect on the lived experience of the neighbours, and its effect on the value of adjacent properties have not been satisfactorily addressed.”

'We bring you the latest Graaff-Reinet, Karoo news'