Submission regarding SSD-97528708
Proposed Development at 160 Oxford Street, Paddington

We live on Gipps Street in Paddington and have lived there for over 20 years.
As a resident who lives here every day and deals with the real situation on these streets I am writing to object to this development.

First, I want to address what is written in 5.1 Affordable Housing and Housing Supply. It says the development will contribute to housing targets and provide much needed affordable housing, and that 10 affordable housing units will improve affordability in Paddington.
This is very misleading.
At the moment there are 27 affordable units on the site. After the development there will only be 10. That is a reduction of 17 affordable units, which means a 63% decrease in affordable housing. On top of that, there will be no one-bedroom affordable units at all. For people working at St Vincent’s Hospital or the UNSW Art and Design Campus, one-bedroom units are exactly what is needed. Removing them does not improve affordability.
Also, these 10 units will only be classified as “affordable” for 15 years. After that, they can be sold at full market price. That is not a long-term contribution to housing affordability. In reality, this proposal significantly reduces the number of affordable homes in Paddington and only provides a temporary replacement for less than half of what currently exists.

I strongly object to the way this is presented as an improvement. It is not. It is a clear net loss of affordable housing.

My second and biggest concern is traffic and congestion in our immediate streets.
In the Traffic and Parking Assessment Report it states that Shadforth Street and Gipps Street are local, unclassified roads primarily used to provide vehicular and pedestrian access to frontage properties, and that kerbside parking is generally permitted on at least one side.
The lived reality on our block is that Shadforth Street is effectively a one-lane street because of parking islands on the eastern side. Cars constantly have to wait and let each other pass. There is regular stopping and reversing because two cars cannot pass at the same time. It functions as a constrained single-lane corridor, not a normal two-way local street.
Gipps Street is even more problematic. It is extremely narrow. There are hardly any garages. Residents rely entirely on street parking. Cars are parked on both sides and in many places vehicles are forced to park with tyres partly up on the kerb just so that any traffic can get through. I have attached photos which clearly show this.
Trucks already pass our house with very little clearance as the kerb is only . Often there is no more than around 30 centimetres between the truck and parked cars or our building. This has already caused damage to our property, including damage to the exterior and to our guttering. This is under current traffic conditions, without the additional construction vehicles and servicing vehicles that will come with this development.
Any claim that these streets can comfortably accommodate additional traffic does not match lived experience. Even a small increase in heavy vehicles will make an already difficult situation worse. During construction especially, the impact will be significant. These are not wide suburban roads. They are tight, historic Paddington streets with narrow footpaths and tightly spaced cottages and terrace houses.
The report language makes the streets sound standard and manageable. They are not. They are constrained, fragile and already operating at their physical limits. And traffic impacts will not only be severe during the construction phase, with heavy vehicles and machinery further constraining already narrow streets, but the situation will not simply return to “normal” once works are completed. Ongoing access to the underground car park will permanently increase vehicle movements, with more cars needing to enter and exit via Shadforth Street or Gipps Street, adding continuous pressure to streets that are already operating at capacity.

I am also very concerned about the impact on the heritage character of Paddington if this State Significant Development is approved in its current form. Our own Heritage Impact Assessment clearly states that development controls exist “to ensure that the scale and form of single storey buildings are retained and that alterations and additions cannot not dominate the principal building.” It also states that “additions at the rear of buildings must not extend beyond the predominant rear building setbacks at any level of a group or row of buildings” and, very importantly, that “additions to single storey semi-detached and terrace groups must not compromise the architectural character of the pair, or the group of houses.”
These principles are applied very strictly to private homeowners in this area. Even modest changes are refused if they are considered to dominate the original form or disrupt the rhythm of a terrace row. Yet this proposal, by virtue of being an SSD, seeks to exceed the very controls that are designed to protect the Paddington Conservation Area. If such a scale and bulk is allowed here, it creates a precedent for future developments to argue the same. Over time this will erode exactly the scale, form and architectural cohesion that the heritage controls are meant to safeguard.

I ask that the consent authority consider the real, lived conditions of Shadforth and Gipps Street, not just what's outlined in a report. These are narrow heritage streets already at capacity, and additional traffic and construction will directly impact residents and the historic fabric of the area. The loss of affordable housing must also be acknowledged honestly - reducing 27 units to 10, removing all one-bedroom options and limiting affordability to 15 years is not an improvement in housing supply. Approving a development of this scale through the SSD pathway also risks setting a precedent that undermines the protections of the Paddington Conservation Area.

For these reasons, I strongly object to SSD-97528708 in its current form.