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A controversial housing development in Melbourne’s south-east is so flawed that rubbish trucks will not be able to fit in driveways, residents will be drowned out by aircraft passing overhead and existing neighbourhoods will be at risk of flooding, a council report warns.
A scathing Kingston City Council report submitted to the state government also claims that plans for the 932-lot redevelopment of the former Kingswood Golf Course have insufficient open space. Officers have questioned the number, location and scale of proposed playgrounds.
Despite being stripped of decision-making power by the state government, Kingston’s urban planners have issued a final plea to the state government to deal with fundamental problems with the Satterley Property Group’s plans before it gives the green light for construction to start on the Dingley Village site.
At Monday night’s council meeting, Mayor Georgina Oxley expressed the deep frustration of a community that has spent years fighting the project.
“This has been a very long journey for our community, one that has been going on for many, many years,” Oxley said.
“It is incredibly disappointing that the planning authority and the decision-making for this site has been taken away from the council and the community and handed over to the minister”.
In a report tabled at Monday’s meeting, and submitted to the state government, council officers claimed the assessment process is flawed and has failed to resolve “threshold issues” regarding the site’s complex hydrology as it sits on a floodplain.
Council planners say they have been excluded from critical discussions between the developer and Melbourne Water and have demanded an independent peer review of flood modelling to ensure the project does not worsen risks to surrounding residents.
A further red flag was raised over the project’s final stage. Planners say its unique rear driveways are so narrow that council rubbish trucks will not be able to circulate to pick up bins. This means one portion of the development will need an owners corporation set up to hire a private waste collection operator with smaller trucks.
Planners also warned that the site’s proximity to Moorabbin Airport meant future residents would be exposed to significant aircraft noise, and strict noise-proofing would need to be factored into the construction of every home.
The report reveals an overall increase in proposed native vegetation removal from the developer’s last round of plans. Council planners now estimate that 8.5 hectares of habitat on the 52-hectare site will be lost. Kingston says the true extent of tree loss is being misrepresented, warning that planned bulk earthworks will probably kill many trees currently marked for survival.
Officers warned Planning Minister Sonya Kilkenny that “community awareness and expectation that these matters are thoroughly assessed is exceptionally high for this site”.
Council officers also criticised the lack of a direct pedestrian link through the nearby primary school to Marcus Road, a “critical net community benefit” sought by locals for years that remains missing from the developer’s plans.
The golf course site has a tortured planning history, having sat on the planning minister’s desk for years before being approved in October 2025. Bought for $125 million by AustralianSuper in 2014, the land was eventually sold to Satterley Property Group in 2024 after initial development attempts were rejected by the council after 8000 public objections.
The meeting follows a high-profile administrative error late last year, in which Kingston Council missed a VCAT appeal deadline to block the overarching development plan by four days.
While Kilkenny remains the responsible authority, Kingston is now demanding a formal right to sign off on all technical designs because the council will eventually be handed the lifelong management of the project’s roads, parks and drainage basins.
The council officers warn that anything less than full technical sign-off could deliver an outcome “that council is not prepared to accept or manage”.
Oxley said local planning decisions “should be made by your local council that is able to listen to and represent the views of the local community, exactly as we have done in this report”.
“But unfortunately, we aren’t the decision maker in this scenario, and unfortunately, that seems to be happening more and more and will continue to probably happen more and more with the planning reform changes,” she said. “And I just think that that is a real shame.”
A Victorian government spokesperson said the proposal was being considered on its merits and that it would be “inappropriate to comment further” while the application was live.
Rachael Dexter is a journalist in the City team at The Age. Contact her at rachael.dexter@theage.com.au, rachaeldexter@protonmail.com, or via Signal at @rachaeldexter.58Connect via Facebook or email.From our partners
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