Inner West Council's 20-storey Lilyfield plan draws resident backlash

Inner West Council’s six-week public exhibition of stage two of its Fairer Future rezoning scheme, open since 15 September and running to 28 October, has drawn an organised resident campaign against a proposal to allow buildings up to 20 storeys on sites in Lilyfield, close to the Lilyfield and Leichhardt North light rail stops.

Why it matters

The council voted in September to seek public feedback on stage two of Fairer Future, having already adopted stage one last year to deliver more than 30,000 new dwellings across the local government area through mostly six to 11 storey buildings, with some towers up to 22 storeys, around Marrickville, Dulwich Hill, Croydon and Ashfield stations. Stage two extends the search for sites into the north of the council area, covering Ashfield, Dulwich Hill, Marrickville, Rozelle, Balmain, and parts of Annandale, Leichhardt, Lilyfield, Lewisham, Petersham, Stanmore, Newtown and St Peters.

The council pursued its own density plan after rejecting the NSW government’s policy of rezoning land within 800 metres of train stations and transport hubs for more apartment and low- to mid-rise housing. Annandale, one of the stage two precincts, already has a separate approval in the same council area: Landcom’s 580-home conversion of the former WestConnex construction compound, where a 21-storey, 220-home essential-worker building has been given the go-ahead. For operators tracking Sydney’s housing-supply pipeline, the Lilyfield exhibition is a live test of how much height the same council will put to its own residents when the sites are not near a train station but a light rail stop, and how organised local opposition can become before a single application is lodged.

The numbers

Stage two proposes buildings up to 20 storeys on several Lilyfield sites, some of which are public housing properties. Opponents, organised as the No High Rises in Lilyfield group, say they had to work through a 956-page proposal document before the exhibition closes. A WhatsApp group opposing the plan attracted 675 members within a few weeks of forming, and the group has raised $10,000 to commission an independent report on the scheme’s transport and infrastructure impacts.

Lilyfield resident Lucy Wynter, who is part of the group, said: “We just think this is spectacularly badly planned.” Inner West mayor Darcy Byrne told residents this week the council would revisit the 20-storey Lilyfield plans, which he conceded went too far and were out of step with the surrounding area.

What’s next

Stage two remains a proposal on public exhibition, not an approved plan. No application for the Lilyfield towers has been lodged, and the council has not voted on the scheme’s final form. The exhibition period closes on 28 October, after which the council will need to consider submissions before deciding whether to proceed with, amend or drop the 20-storey sites, including the mayor’s flagged review of the Lilyfield heights.

Developers eyeing medium and high-density sites along the Lilyfield and Leichhardt North light rail corridor should treat the current heights as provisional rather than a confirmed yield. The mayor’s public concession that the Lilyfield heights go too far suggests the council may wind back density on at least some sites before stage two is finalised, which would cut the number of dwellings a site could ultimately support compared with what is on exhibition now. Operators should also note the pattern from stage one: a council-led density plan, pursued instead of the state government’s station-based rezoning, can still take a year or more to move from adoption to applications on the ground, since this exhibition follows a stage one process the council only adopted last year. Any feasibility modelling done against the stage two heights now on exhibition should be revisited once the council responds to submissions and, if applicable, the mayor’s own flagged concerns about the Lilyfield sites.