Residents of caravan parks and manufactured home estates throughout the Tweed will be informed of developments likely to impact on their lifestyle under long-sought changes to council notification procedures.
The council has unanimously supported a push by Chinderah councillor Kevin Skinner to include the shire’s estimated 35,000-plus park home-owners in the community consultation process enjoyed by other residents.

The radical policy shift will require staff for the first time to include park residents in the notification process, forewarning them of any major developments planned around their homes or even in their parks.
Park residents say the changes put them on an equal footing as other home-owners in being able to object to anything which may have a major impact on their amenity.

Cr Skinner sought the changes after residents of the Tweed Heritage Caravan Park at Chinderah complained they had been left out of the loop about a nearby four-lot industrial subdivision which will create a new road and destroy a natural waterway next to their park.
They say they were too late to question assertions contained in a report to the council, including a description of the waterway, which is to be piped underground, as a drain despite it being identified in other documents as a natural waterway.
As result the park owner was the only objector to the controversial development which some fear could be the thin edge of a wedge to turn the area around their park into a giant industrial estate.

Cr Skinner, who is surrounded by six parks providing low-cost housing for up to 2500 residents in Chinderah and Kingscliff, said the Heritage stoush brought the non-notification of residents to a head.
 ‘I think everyone has the right to know if a proposed development is going to affect their lifestyle or amenity,’ he said.
‘Caravan park residents should be just as entitled as any other resident to know of anything which could impact on their park.’
The council has directed its staff to bring down a report showing how to change procedures to ‘facilitate a more pro-active requirement for the council to advertise and directly notify the owners and residents’ of the parks and estates.

Council to act quickly
Cr Skinner said he expected the council to act quickly to implement some system of notification, even if it was simply a requirement for park owners to display any development application on a community notice board.
‘We haven’t yet worked out the most efficient way of doing it yet but I expect some system in place in the near future.
Long-time tenants’ advocate and former resident of the notorious Banora Point Caravan Park, Len Hogg, welcomed the proposed changes.

‘It’s a step in the right direction and I applaud it’, said Mr Hogg, who fears some owners are gearing up to replace traditional low-cost relocatable homes with upmarket housing previously not allowed in caravan parks.
‘A lot of the residents are retired and often living on the pension so they are very anxious to preserve and protect their lifestyle as well as the parks they live in.
‘They don’t want  to be booted out by owners who think they will be allowed to redefine the concept of manufactured park estates by turning them into upmarket gated communities filled with luxury villas.’