Cavendish Street, Stanmore
Laid out in 1863, in the first Torrens title subdivision in New South Wales. Council's draft housing plan would take much of it out of the Kingston South conservation area. Drag the photo to see what it allows.
Illustration of the heights the draft could allow. How we made it
What is here
In 1863 Holt, Smart and Mort subdivided South Kingston. It was the first subdivision registered under the Torrens title system in New South Wales. Council calls it Deposited Plan 1.
The lots, the lane and the Victorian, Federation and inter-war houses built on them still make Cavendish Street what it is: single and two-storey houses, front gardens, the street trees, the corner shop at Merchant Street and the grounds of Stanmore Public School at the Holt Street end. Council protects it as the Kingston South Heritage Conservation Area.
The draft plan would take the houses on Cavendish Street from 88 to 146, and the row behind them on Stanmore Road, out of that protection.
South Kingston subdivided. Council's own heritage sheet calls Kingston South part of the first Torrens title subdivision in NSW.
Kingston South HCA sheet, Inner West CouncilOriginal 1863 lots still intact in Kingston South that the draft takes out. Three are on Cavendish Street: 112, 126 and 132.
Draft DCP, Kingston South; Blue Book p.47Houses on this street that Council's own heritage adviser says warrant investigation for listing. None has been assessed. All four lose their protection.
Heritage Review, printed pp.3 and 63Addresses taken out of Kingston South across Stanmore. 137 of them get a higher zone or height at the same time.
Council's exhibition map layers, October 2026What the draft allows
The houses go from R2 to R3 and their height limit rises from 9.5 to 12.5 metres. Council's incentive adds more where neighbours sell together: three lots in the middle of the row are enough for 15.7 metres. The walk-up flats beside Stanmore Public School go from 9.5 to 21.5 metres, and to 27.9 metres where two of them are joined. Council's own worked example calls that eight storeys.
Council has not said whether the State's in-fill affordable housing bonus, up to 30 per cent more height where 15 per cent of the floor space is affordable housing, can be added on top of its own incentives. If it can, these are the heights.
Council's Area 2 incentive applies where 119 and 121B are joined (27.9 metres). Its Area 4 incentive applies on the row where a site reaches 1,000 square metres and 35 metres of frontage (15.7 metres).
The mapped heights in the exhibited draft: 21.5 metres (six storeys on Council's table) at the flats, 12.5 metres (three storeys) on the row.
Today both sides of the street are R2 with a 9.5 metre height limit, inside Kingston South.
Before and after
Drag each picture, or press Draft. If a note came through your letterbox, its link shows your own house.
How we made the pictures: each before photo is a street-level view of Cavendish Street or Stanmore Road. Each after picture is an AI-assisted edit of that same view, adding buildings of the height the draft controls could allow with Council's incentives and the State's affordable housing bonus (about four to six storeys on the houses, up to eight beside the school). They are illustrations of scale, not designs for any site.
In Council's own words
Every line below is from Council's documents or its consultants'. An officer can check each one.
have not been subject to detailed heritage assessment
Council's heritage adviser says 102 to 104 and 128 to 130 Cavendish Street warrant investigation for future listing. The draft removes their protection anyway.
Heritage Review, OFFP2 and Deferred Matters, printed pp.3 and 63Removal of HCAs was not scoped
Council's answer in 2025, when asked to take Trafalgar Street, also in Kingston South, out of the conservation area. It said an LGA-wide heritage health check had to come first. That check is not part of this plan.
Council report, 30 September 2025, engagement outcomesallowing a greater proportion of future housing uplift to occur
The reason the heritage review gives for the new boundary. It grades no house on Cavendish Street.
Heritage Review, printed pp.6 and 43are not compatible with higher-density redevelopment
Council's own principle for high-quality residential conservation areas, with their pitched roofs, gables and street pattern.
Blue Book p.8removed from the dwelling yield calculations
Council's master plan does not count strata buildings as new homes. The flats beside the school are 40 strata units, so their six to eight storeys add no counted homes.
Draft Master Plan, Part E, p.287Stanmore Public School and its grounds
Council's Kingston South sheet names the school grounds, "now rare in inner urban schools", as part of the area's significance. The listing covers the whole site. The draft puts 21.5 metres on its boundary.
Kingston South HCA sheet; Inner West LEP 2022, Schedule 5, I1506The plan
Hatched lots leave the conservation area. The solid line is the draft boundary. Tap a lot to see what the draft does to it.
What leaving the conservation area allows
Inside a conservation area, a house cannot be demolished under the State's complying development rules. Take the conservation area away and a private certifier can approve the demolition of a detached house: no application to Council, no heritage assessment.
A new front, or a second storey that shows from the street, no longer faces the heritage test either. On lots this narrow, the quickest change is often the one that adds no homes at all: an old house replaced by a new one.
Each rebuild on a street of shared walls means demolition, excavation and months of building beside the houses that stay, on the streets that carry the school run.
Growth that keeps the street
Houses on this street have added rooms with second storeys set behind the front, where they are not seen from the footpath. Council's own draft DCP asks for exactly that: additions "behind the primary building form, preferably to the rear".
Draft Inner West DCP, Part 2, controls C11 and C15
Homes counted
Everything residents are asking Council to keep on this block is less than half of one per cent of the 20,539 dwellings of theoretical capacity in Council's master plan.
Draft Master Plan, Part E, Table 37; strata counted at zero, as Council does
What happens next
Council's officers read every submission in November and recommend changes. Councillors vote on them. Submissions that name the street and ask for something specific give them something to act on.
Council's survey, an email to the planning team, or a letter by post. Emails to councillors any time.
Council's last drop-in session, at Petersham Service Centre, 2 to 14 Fisher Street. Bring this page.
Council's planners summarise the submissions and recommend amendments.
Anyone can register to speak for three minutes. Councillors can move amendments on the night.
Council sends the plan to the NSW Government to be made into law.
Have your say
Tick the things that matter to you. We turn them into your own words.
Copy your comment into the official survey on Your Say.
A fuller submission to Council's planning team, sent by you or by us.
They vote in December. Pick yours on the map.