Planning rules for additional residential units to be updated

Luke Edwards, Post Contributor

Norwich township councillors have signaled their support for township and Oxford County staff to develop tighter rules around additional residential unit (ARU) applications, especially to curtail unwanted issues of swapping.

Oxford County policy planner Hanne Yager gave an update to Norwich councillors at the Sept. 9 council meeting regarding a review of changes made in ARU policy to reflect new provincial legislation enacted in recent years.

One of the main areas of concern for planners and councillors alike are what is described as a “swap.” Essentially this means when an ARU becomes a principal dwelling. While Yager said there’s “no inherent problems” with these types of situations, they can be used in ways that go against the intended purpose. When that happens, it can have negative consequences on the township’s and county’s agricultural land.

“ARUs are intended to provide affordable housing options, not a second single detached dwelling. Therefore, ensuring an ARU is secondary and subordinate to the principal dwelling has beneficial impacts for the agricultural reserve,” Yager said.

A review of ARU applications made since the new zoning rules came in place found nearly 40 per cent involved a swap and most were occurring in the agricultural reserve.

“Applications involved in a swap are more likely to request relief for both maximum gross floor area and distance from the principal dwelling compared to applications not involved in a swap,” Yager said.

In some cases, these requests for relief are significant, but even when it’s minimal, Yager said the cumulative effect is significant.

“I think at the end of the day the concern is not with the act of swapping if they are meeting the intent of policy criteria, but what we’re finding through the research in a consolidated basis is that not only is relief more frequent for swaps but the amount of relief is becoming larger than compared to cases where swaps are not happening," Yager said.

Norwich councillors acknowledged it’s a concern locally.

“The swaps that we’ve been talking about where the new building is bigger than the old building, it does seem to me that that’s contrary to the intent of the legislation,” said Coun. Karl Toews.

Staff are looking at some potential changes, including shifting how ARU scale and lot coverage is calculated. They’re also looking at updating definitions to get more certainty around things like distances and rules for driveways.

Toews said he was happy to see staff are looking to address the issues, saying it’s a balancing act.

“We have an issue with the housing crisis, we have to safeguard the use of our farmland, especially in Oxford, but we also…have to be sure that we’re safeguarding the small town character of villages like Norwich,” he said.