Large blocks such as the one occupied by the Ascot Vale house – with no heritage protections in areas close to services and jobs – are being targeted for development. “The ambience of the whole of the area hangs off this particular house on this particular corner,” Moonee Valley councillor Jim Cusack said last week, during a meeting where an urgent motion to stave off destruction of the Charles Street house was discussed. Three townhouses proposed to replace the house that now stands at 81 Charles Street, Ascot Vale. More than 1600 people have signed a petition to prevent the demolition of the house, bought for $1.775 million in 2017 by John and Cecilia Glossop who run Glossop Town Planning. Heritage activist Adam Ford says Melbourne is losing too many houses like this.

Illustration: Matt Golding Credit: Councils blame scarce resources to identify houses that should be saved, while Planning Minister Richard Wynne blames councils for not updating their heritage studies more regularly. In his role as a campaigner for historic buildings, Ford says the sort of frantic rearguard action to save a house like Charles Street is being replicated too often around Melbourne. It shows all that is wrong with the city’s heritage laws, he says. Heritage activist Adam Ford in front of the Ascot Vale home. Credit:Chris Hopkins His group wants the state government to take over responsibility for overseeing all heritage overlays – meaning owners of these buildings must at least get council or ministerial approval before demolishing.

Councils are required to have heritage studies that are regularly updated as part of their wider planning laws. But they are costly – a heritage reviewer must go from house to house and assess the merits of each one. Councils might update them once a decade. The house at 55 Seymour Road, Elsternwick, before demolition work began. This week in Elsternwick, a 130-year-old Federation house purchased last month for $3 million was the subject of a similar petition to Ascot Vale’s Charles Street. The owner of the house at 55 Seymour Road, Elsternwick, moved swiftly – perhaps alarmed by the growing calls to save the property – and reduced it to rubble on Thursday. A near neighbour to the house, Sam Dugdale, tried to stop the wrecking ball. She phoned her local council, Glen Eira, and was told they were powerless to act.

Instead, the council suggested she file a request with the state government’s Heritage Victoria for interim protection. Unsurprisingly, she says, her request for an order was rejected. “I don’t know the first thing about planning law or heritage,” says Dugdale, a marketing consultant. “I just know it’s wrong.” The Elsternwick home being demolished on Thursday. Credit:Joe Armao Local councillor Mary Delahunty wrote to the Planning Minister on Wednesday afternoon, urging him to protect the Elsternwick home. Hours after the letter was sent, the home was gone. Delahunty admits the council needs to update its heritage controls for suburbs such as Elsternwick. But she also says the requirement to amend the area’s entire planning scheme make this a “really onerous” process. The Planning Minister can stop demolition of historic properties. In May, Wynne did just that after an outcry over Currajong House in Hawthorn, which was slated for demolition. But he is reluctant to do this – planning ministers don’t like changing the rules on land that owners purchased under one set of conditions.

Currajong House in Hawthorn was saved from demolition by Planning Minister Richard Wynne in May. Credit:change.ory The most blatant example of this sort of destruction, which the Planning Minister declined to block, was landmark Toorak mansion Idylwilde. Bought in 2013 for $18.5 million, it was knocked down in 2015. The empty block where it once stood is now back on the market for $40 million. A spokeswoman for the Planning Minister says the government expects councils to protect heritage buildings, “and believe they are best placed to identify how their unique places of heritage significance can be managed”. Independent think-tank the Grattan Institute last year concluded that state governments should be doing everything possible to encourage more housing development in inner and middle-ring suburbs – like Elsternwick or Ascot Vale – to create more affordable housing. The idea puts heritage on a direct collision course with developers. “With heritage, like many things, you can have too much of a good thing,” says Grattan Institute chief executive John Daley, who co-authored the report.

The Toorak mansion bought for $18.5 million and razed. The empty block is now on the market for $40 million. He says some areas of Melbourne clearly need more heritage protection. “But we have to accept that this comes always at a cost - if you lock up too much of the city for heritage reasons, you wind up with not enough medium-density development and as a result your children can’t afford a home.” He points to Brisbane, where tough rules prevent the demolition of, he says, “half to two-thirds of middle Brisbane on the basis that these are heritage buildings”. The National Trust regularly campaigns to save individual houses or buildings and advocacy manager Felicity Watson says most cases expose a systemic problem: “That our local heritage protection system has a lot of gaps in it.” Loading

“Municipalities like Boroondara are investing a lot of money to protect heritage,” she says. “And then you have got places like Bayside council, who have just abandoned the idea of protecting modernist heritage because it’s unpalatable to heritage property owners who want to develop.”