The English jurist Edward Coke wrote in his Laws of England in 1628 “”A man’s house is his castle.” The phrase articulates two elements of the common-law tradition. The first is that a person’s home should not be violated without a judicial search warrant. The second is that a person can do or build whatever they like on their own land. And like a castle, the house can be defended.
It is likely that Daryl Parker had the latter in mind when he decided to build a 6m and 2m shed at his house in Gordon. He wanted it in his front yard so there would be room in the safety of the back for his children to play. He was doing what he thought best for himself and his family. But the law embodied in the saying “”a man’s house is his castle” has, quite rightly, been qualified in the past 372 years. It has had to be. There are more things that can be done to or on land that are harmful to others. They include physical things like smoke emissions and less physical things like noise, closing off light and aesthetics. In a city, we aim to maximise our enjoyment of the land. It means that for all to get reasonable enjoyment, there have to be restrictions on others.
And so it was that Mr Parker found himself in the Administrative Appeals Tribunal where an order was made for him to remove the shed. There must have been some misunderstanding before it got that far. Mr Parker said he went to the Building Control section of the Department of Urban Services. “”Once they gave us the go-ahead, we went out and put up the shed.” No doubt, Building Control told Mr Parker that as far as they were concerned no building approval was required for sheds under 10 square metres. But the Building Control section deals with construction standards and integrity. It does not deal with design and siting of buildings. The next step for Mr Parker was to see if approval were needed for the siting of the shed on his block. That is a matter for Planning and Land Management. The normal practice is for each arm of the building bureaucracy to inform people about the requirements of the other arm. Given the thousands of applications there are very few cases like that of Mr Parker.
Yes; Mr Parker can build his shed without detail engineering plans and building oversight and inspection, but he cannot plonk it anywhere. In particular, he cannot plonk it at the front of his block.
As the president of the of tribunal, Michael Peedom, said, the residential design and siting code required that all buildings “”provide attractive streetscapes which reinforce the functions of the street and enhance the amenity of dwellings”. Structures at the front, such as garages mad carports were not to dominate the view.
The argument over a garden shed might seem trivial but it exemplifies the delicate balance in Canberra between the freedom of people doing what they want on their own land and the right of residents in general not to have their streetscape degraded. There is a case for saying the rights of the latter should be protected more because it is the former who are altering the status quo. One shed may not seem much, but replicated it can irreparably affect one of Canberra’s most valuable assets: its aesthetic beauty.
It si good to see Planning and Land Management taking its role seriously. The question now is will it take up the AAT’s ruling in a more vigorous way to stop the mushrooming of garages and carports too close to the front in new and extensions and dual occupancies? Without reversing some of these trends, Canberra will have little to distinguish it from everywhere else and we will lose one of our major attractions as a city: the showcase nature of our streetscapes.