Former Esperance town planner Richard Hindley. Photo: Geoff Vivian.
Esperance’s mild mannered town planner is moving on.
Richard Hindley, manager of development services, is to take up a new position as Jerramungup Shire manager of development, based in Bremer Bay.
As Mr Hindley is one of regional WA’s more talented town planners, we invited him to reflect on his fondest memories of almost 18 years at Esperance.
“All the networks I have developed in town and in the rural area,” he said.
“It has been a really valuable experience for me making those connections, being able to work through issues and find solutions.”
When we asked him for examples he mentioned relocating Lucky Bay Brewery from the owner’s home block at Pink Lake.
“They were given two years’ grace with limited numbers to find a new site,” he said.
“It was a proprietary water area where they were located so it was a matter of finding a site that was not in that area.”
Mr Hindley said to do so required a lot of careful liaison and creative problem solving. He took the same approach to policy work.
“Esperance has big sheds on residential blocks because Esperance now has a policy to allow big sheds,” he said.
“They are needed for caravans, boats, you have had many different things stored in sheds from car collections to hovercraft.
Esperance does like a big shed.
For this reason, Mr Hindley said the new “big sheds policy” assisted in housing people on residential blocks.
“I said: ‘if it keeps coming to council, council keeps signing off on these, so should we amend the policy so council doesn’t have to sign off on it every time?’,” he said.
“We advertised it, there were no objections and it became council policy.”
Another achievement he listed was the short-lived tiny houses on wheels policy, making Esperance the first local authority in Australia to have fully compliant tiny homes.
“I had no idea we would be the first,” he said.
“By the time the State changed the rules and undid what we did, we had four local governments adopt the policy.
“I got a lot of good feedback from doing that and I had a lot of local councils say it got them to look at different options.”
Another career highlight that fewer people would appreciate is the current town planning scheme.
“It is rare for a planner to do an entire scheme by himself,” Mr Hindley said.
“I wrote it, it went through the EPA, I got it through Council.
“It’s a very bespoke planning document, it is probably one of the most detailed, perfectly-pitched documents for the regions.
“We have rural subdivision capacity whereas most local governments don’t have that.”
He admitted to mixed feelings about moving on.
I am going to miss the people but there is an opportunity and sometimes a change is good as a holiday — it presents me with a whole new set of challenges.
“I am sure at some stage I will come back to Esperance.”
He said he would continue to work part time as Ravensthorpe shire’s Town Planner as he was completing the Shire’s new planning scheme 7.
