By Charlene Macaulay
Wyndham council has called on the Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal (VCAT) to knock back a planning application for a new private school in Point Cook.
Lighthouse Christian College, which runs a K-12 school in Keysborough, lodged plans with Wyndham council in November last year for a $6.9 million Point Cook campus that would cater for 448 students on a nine-hectare site on Point Cook Homestead Road.
The matter will go before VCAT in February next year after Lighthouse Christian College lodged an appeal against Wyndham council’s failure to grant a permit within the prescribed time.
The council, which is required to advise VCAT of its position on the matter, said it would have refused the application if it were the deciding body.
Councillor Mia Shaw said despite the need for more schools in Wyndham, the site was in the Green Wedge Buffer precinct – which provides a buffer between the RAAF base, land within the Urban Growth Boundary and an established area of Point Cook – and the school’s proposal was inconsistent with a number of council and state planning policies.
Fellow councillor Heather Marcus added: “When you get down to the traffic engineering, they are very concerned that a lot of the children that will be going to this Christian college would not be children from this area, so therefore there will be traffic congestion getting to and from the school.”
The Department of Defence has also formally objected to the proposal, arguing the proposed school would be too close to military and civil operations at the Point Cook RAAF base.
