News · Planning · Warners Bay + Coal Point

Two buildings over the height limit went to the council on 13 July. One rule is why the councillors decided them

On the night of Monday 13 July 2026 Lake Macquarie’s elected councillors, not their planners, have to sign off two buildings that break the city’s height limit: a four-storey, 25-apartment block a short walk from the Warners Bay centre that stands 26 per cent over the cap, and a house on a steep Coal Point block 12 per cent over. Both are recommended for approval. The reason they land on the councillors’ desk at all sits in a single line of the planning rules.

The Hunter Ledger · 10 July 2026 · read directly from the 121-page meeting agenda, linked below

Outcome, 4 August 2026: both were approved, unanimously. The Development and Planning Standing Committee determined both applications on 13 July and Council adopted those determinations by resolution on 27 July. The Warners Bay residential flat building (DA/973/2024) was approved with its height variation endorsed at 15.17 metres against a 12 metre standard, 26.4 per cent over. The Coal Point dwelling (DA/1466/2025) was approved with a variation to 9.5 metres against 8.5 metres, 11.76 per cent over. Each was carried nine votes to nil. Details and sourcing in the note at the foot of this story.

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The Development and Planning Standing Committee meets at 6.30pm on Monday 13 July at the Hunter Sports Centre, kaiyu nungkiliko, at Glendale, and the sitting is streamed live. Three items are listed. Two of them are development applications that each ask the council to allow a building taller than the limit the council’s own planning map sets, and both come with a staff recommendation to approve. The third is a housekeeping refresh of a council policy. The full business paper runs to 121 pages; the two applications take up most of it.

Why these two reach the councillors

Most development applications in Lake Macquarie never go near the elected council. They are assessed and determined by staff under delegation. What pulls a proposal up to the councillors themselves is the size of any breach of a numeric development standard. Under clause 4.6 of the Lake Macquarie Local Environmental Plan 2014 an applicant can ask to vary a standard, such as the maximum building height, if strict compliance would be “unreasonable or unnecessary”. The state government’s Guide to Varying Development Standards then draws a bright line: where the variation to a numeric standard is greater than 10 per cent, the determining authority is the elected council, not a planning officer.

Both applications on the 13 July agenda cross that line, so both become the councillors’ call. That is the whole reason a routine house at Coal Point shares an agenda with a 25-unit apartment building: not because they are alike, but because each asks for a bit more height than the map allows, and each asks for more than a tenth more.

Warners Bay: 25 apartments, and a limit the council has been moving

The larger application is for a four-storey residential flat building at 15-17 Charles Street, on two lots totalling 2,500 square metres a short walk from the Warners Bay centre. It proposes 25 apartments in a mix of one, two and three-bedroom layouts, a first-floor communal open space and 33 car spaces, with two existing dwellings and a secondary dwelling to be demolished. The land is zoned R3 Medium Density Residential, where flat buildings are permitted.

The height is where it needs the councillors. The building reaches 15.17 metres against a 12-metre standard, a 3.17-metre or 26.4 per cent variation. The site also floods, from the lake and the North Creek catchment, so the habitable floors sit on a podium lifted to 2.82 metres above sea level to clear a one-in-100-year flood, with the block shaped in a U facing south to hand solar access to the homes behind it. The application was advertised in August and September 2024 and drew two submissions, both objecting. The assessment report recommends approval.

What makes this more than a single building is that the council has spent the last two years deliberately steering Warners Bay towards exactly this kind of development. The 12-metre limit is itself recent: it was lifted from 10 metres in 2024 through a planning proposal whose stated aim was to remove barriers to infill housing in well-located spots near shops and services. Then, in late 2025, the council adopted an updated Local Strategic Planning Statement that names Warners Bay a Local Centre, sets a target of 50 dwellings per hectare, and backs mid-rise buildings of up to four storeys within walking distance of a centre, in step with the Hunter Regional Plan. The assessment report leans on that newer strategy openly: a strict reading of the 12-metre cap would allow three storeys, it notes, but four storeys keeps faith with the character the council has said it wants. In other words, the “breach” is the council’s own direction running a step ahead of the number still printed on its map.

Coal Point: a metre of extra height, and where it came from

The second application is a house, not a project: a two-storey dwelling with an attached garage, a secondary dwelling, a shed and a swimming pool on a vacant 2,200-square-metre battleaxe block at 242 Coal Point Road, zoned R2 Low Density Residential. It seeks 9.5 metres against an 8.5-metre limit, a one-metre or 11.76 per cent variation, and the report attributes the extra height to the fall of the land rather than to a bigger building. It squeaks over the 10 per cent line, which is the only reason it is on the agenda at all.

The paper trail is a small study in how the notification system is meant to work. The application was advertised three times: once in late 2025 with no submissions; again in April 2026, after staff asked for corrected plans, when two neighbours objected to the size and use of the proposed shed; and a third time in June, after the shed was cut down in response, with no further objections. The report recommends approval, and records that if the council refuses it instead, the reasons have to be written into the motion and the applicant keeps a right to appeal to the Land and Environment Court.

Also on the agenda: the contaminated-land policy

The third item is administrative. The council is asked to rescind its current Managing Contaminated or Potentially Contaminated Land policy and adopt a revised version. The report is explicit that the amendments do not change the policy’s intent: they simplify the language, improve readability and update references to current legislation, agencies and regulatory requirements, including the Contaminated Land Management Act 1997 and the state’s Resilience and Hazards planning policy. The policy governs how the council weighs known or suspected contamination, from old industrial fill to affected public reserves, when land is developed.

What happens on the night

On each application the councillors have three options the report sets out: approve it with conditions, refuse it with stated reasons, or send it back to the assessing officer to work through specific issues. A decision to approve also has to formally endorse the height variation before it endorses the building. The meeting can be watched live at webcast.lakemac.com.au, and residents can apply to address the council through its public forum. We will follow the outcomes.

Updated 4 August 2026, with the outcome. This story was published on 10 July, before the meeting it previews, and a note added on 27 July said we could not report the result because no minutes had been published. That was still true today: 22 days after the sitting, the 13 July committee page carries only its agenda. The decisions were in a different document. Lake Macquarie confirms minutes at a later Ordinary meeting, and puts the committee’s determinations in that meeting’s agenda, so the outcomes of 13 July are recorded in the 27 July Ordinary Council Meeting agenda, a 175-page document we downloaded and read.

It records that the Development and Planning Standing Committee determined both applications on 13 July, and that the determinations were adopted by resolution of Council, at its meeting held on 27 July 2026. Item 26DP004, Warners Bay: Council endorsed the clause 4.6 variation providing a maximum height of 15.17m, exceeding the 12m development standard under the Lake Macquarie Local Environmental Plan 2014 by 3.17m or 26.4% and approved DA/973/2024 for the residential flat building subject to conditions, moved by Cr Buckley and seconded by Cr Schultz. Item 26DP003, Coal Point: Council endorsed a variation allowing a maximum height of 9.5m, exceeding the 8.5m development standard by 1m or 11.76% and approved DA/1466/2025 subject to conditions, moved by Cr Pauling and seconded by Cr Swinsburg. Both were carried with nine councillors recorded for the motion and none against: Crs Adamthwaite, Antcliff, Grigg, Warner, Pauling, Swinsburg, Buckley, Schultz and Radcliffe. The meeting closed at 6.41pm. Nothing in the original story changed; the preview described both applications as recommended for approval, and both were approved.

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