Soap Kitchen move is buried by bureaucracy

A REQUIREMENT to detail the pot sizes and botanical names of a proposed garden was the final straw for the owners of Wagga's Gourmet Soap Kitchen. Angela Forman and Wendy Nutt had planned to move their business from Forsyth Street to the old railway rest house on Railway Street.They hoped to make the site a tourist attraction, serving tea and coffee, displaying railway heritage information and giving visitors the opportunity to watch them make their soap.But although their development application for a change of use at the site was approved, Ms Forman said the strict conditions placed on the project made it impossible to proceed."They over-officiated everything," she said."We had to specify exactly what sort of trees they were going to be and the pot sizes."Everything had to be done before we moved in there, and to spend that kind of money straight up, we just couldn't afford that."Ms Forman said the cost of a ramp to provide disabled access to the building had ballooned from a few hundred dollars to thousands.Requirements for disabled access to the public toilets would have meant knocking out walls, which would also have been an expensive exercise, even though Ms Forman said the existing toilets were wide enough for a wheelchair."The cost has made it so that with the specifications we've had, we can't do it," Ms Forman said."It's cost us at least $5000 in plans, Wendy's spent at least a couple of months doing all the drawings."We could've done Bunnings by now, or Woolworths, or the Eiffel Tower, with the amount of work it's been."She said the business was keen to stay in Wagga, where it has a loyal base of customers, but was finding it frustrating to work with council.The Gourmet Soap Kitchen would be staying in its current location for as long as possible, but Ms Forman had wanted to provide a tourist attraction for the city."We wanted to do it because we thought Wagga needed it," Ms Forman said."Everyone's expecting us to have this tourist thing, they're all asking about it. "She said another council had provided much more support for the business, offering a number of sites where it could be developed, but she would prefer to stay in Wagga. Wagga City Council defended the conditions imposed on the application, saying most of them were essential under the Environmental Planning and Assessment Act 1979."The Environmental Planning and Assessment Act 1979 NSW government legislation is the principal planning legislation in NSW which sets out the development assessment system for the state," a council statement said.Rather than being specific to Gourmet Soap Kitchen's plans, the conditions were general clauses which would apply to any development application.