Ryde Council and ANY Council for that matter, have absolutely no say on whether you can have a Granny Flat- the New SEPP is universal to all NSW Councils. The only Council which is currently not using the SEPP is Waringah Council. Reason is they don’t use 'zones' and hence are in a legal row with the Dept. of Planning. Cracks me up.
You're right; Ryde does have a lot going for it. It’s geographically centralised and has excellent access to the city and the mountains as well. The larger block sizes in Ryde also lend themselves to granny flats, whether attached or detached from the main dwelling.
I've personally had 8 granny flats approved so far this year in NSW-2 in Ryde. I’m an architectural draftsman. My initial goal is to totally bypass Council (and use a Private Certifier) by keeping the new granny flat under 60 sq. mtrs; but there are other prescriptions. These relate primarily to setbacks (distance to boundaries), height and the overall floor space of the combined house and granny flat. Some of Ryde is Bush-Fire prone so that automatically disqualifies those properties. This is also true of Heritage properties.
The only thing Council DO have a say in, is DRAINAGE. You must comply with the specific Councils' Drainage Code. This can sometimes be difficult because some Councils have very strict regulations regarding OSD and Retention. Whilst the new SEPP does say something about methods of Stormwater, it also has a clause which allows Council to implement its Code if your overall site coverage exceeds their controls. It’s complicated and can be an expensive aspect of the whole development. I always try to design my own system but it depends on the Council. Generally I draw a line at Victoria Rd and any Council north of that line is what I consider to be difficult. Go to Campbelltown, Bankstown or even Sutherland and you'll find their engineers are much less anal about drainage.
I hope this helps.
I have a website, if the admins don’t mind me posting it that is specifically aimed at granny flat design, approval and building in Sydney, NSW. I’ve found that with the new SEPP and people tweaking to the benefits (especially investors) the demand for granny flats has increased greatly. I get 4+ enquiries a day. Most are investors.
Private Certifiers are reluctant to do granny flats at the moment (as Complying Development) under the 10 day approval rule, because the process is not simple- its all new and actually quite complicated when you factor in each Council's individual codes. It’s my job to simplify all of that and save people money.
Link:
http://www.grannyflatapprovals.com.au
There’s some more info there and other links to resources for people looking to build a granny flat in NSW.
Cheers.
