Southern Grampians Shire Council is reminding residents that a permit is required before carrying out any works within a council road reserve.
A road reserve is the area between the road and a property boundary and generally includes the road shoulder, nature strip and footpath.
Council’s Director Infrastructure and Sustainability Marg Scanlon said instances where residents should apply for a permit to work within a road reserve included:
– Using machinery on a road reserve to carry out works to property ie landscaping.
– Building or renewing a driveway and/or crossover.
– Building a new property boundary structure like a retaining wall.
– Planting a tree on a nature strip, or anything higher than 500mm.
– Ms Scanlon said that under the Road Management Act 2004 (Schedule 7) it was an offence for works to be carried out within a road reserve without a permit from the relevant authority.
“Council is responsible for ensuring that council owned and maintained roads are safe and functional for all road users,” she said. “We also need to protect the integrity of infrastructure like kerb and channel, culverts, signage and pedestrian treatments.”
Ms Scanlon said there had been cases in the past 12 months where residents in the shire had not applied for the permit.
“Some of the breaches unfortunately resulted in damage to roadside drainage infrastructure, which led to water logging in road shoulders. In some instances, edges have broken off the roads from machinery damage or from poor engineering of driveway cross-overs. Even using the wrong type of material in construction creates problems.”
Ms Scanlon added that planting the wrong type of tree on a nature strip could cause a hazard for motorists and damage to public infrastructure.
“It’s important for council to review the species, proposed location and size of the tree before planting to reduce the risk of the tree impacting the line of sight for motorists and other road users.”
To mitigate future breaches of the Act, Council is increasing its surveillance of third party works in road reserves (including service connections) to check if permits had been granted.
If in doubt or to apply for a permit, please call Council on 5573 0444 or visit www.sthgrampians.vic.gov.au and go to Services, then Roads & Infrastructure then scroll down to Works Within Road Reserves.
