Council refuses planning permit for a swimming pool - breaches covenant

What do you do when your local council refuses you a swimming pool permit because it would breach a registered restrictive covenant? Perhaps have the local council weasel arrested by the Police for making another stupid decision. What options do you have? You could make application to the Supreme Court to have the covenant removed or amended. This could cost you $15000 to $25000, a lot of time and with no guarantee that you would still succeed. Or as one punter did, he appealed the Council's decision to refuse to grant the Permit and took his case to VCAT. In fact the Tribunal member decided this one on the spot. He too obviously can recognise stupid decisions when he sees one. Anecdotally I have been hearing a number of people affected by similar restrictive covenants been refused permits for a swimming pool.

The restrictive coveant in question is quite common in the sandbelt areas of bayside Melbourne and were placed on title by developers in the 1920s to 1950s which was the era before planning schemes were adopted. A typical covenant will read
Will not excavate carry away or remove or permit to be excavated carried away or removed from the land hereby transferred any earth clay stone gravel or sand except for the purpose of excavating for the foundations of any buildings to be erected thereon or use or permit or allow the said land to be used for the manufacture or winning of bricks tiles or pottery ware.

Such covenants evolved to preserve an aesthetic standard and I could not ever think any covenant was meant to restrict the construction of a swimming pool.