Oh dear, here we have yet another visually ugly proposal to cram extra dwellings on a suburban block in a residential area. I am not against developments which make better use of some of the large blocks of land in our suburbs, but almost all of these developments that I have seen over the last few years involve unattractive and boxy dwellings built as cheaply as possible (e.g. single pitch roofs). There is no thought being given by developers (or Council) to the negative effects such developments have on the visual amenity of immediate neighbours or the overall impacts on the locale.
With this set of plans I notice that there is a "future lift" space shown - why not install a lift as a part of the initial build? This would make the buildings accessible to people with disability - retro fitting is always more expensive, and developments such as this one often don't go on the market until after completion, which means that the additional costs of retro-fitting are imposed on the PwD. It's a pity the building code does not mandate all 2 story units such as these having lifts fitted from Day 1 - there is a massive shortage of disability friendly housing available, but the shortsightedness and ignorance of builders and developers means they can't see a whole market segment exists which is not being catered for. And catering for disability in builds such as this means that people who become disabled through accident or illness can still stay in their homes.
One thing I have noticed is that despite all the massive awareness raising of hygiene issues as a result of the pandemic (i;e. hand-washing) almost without exception plans that go to Council do not have hand-washing basins in their separate toilets - I wish the building code could be amended to make hand-washing capacity a mandatory element for all separate toilets.
