BOMBALA Council’s rural addressing project is “99 per cent complete” says director of regulatory services Grantley Ingram.
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The project sees rural properties that up until now may have only been identified by a name, now allocated a street number.
A major benefit of this is easier identification of properties by emergency services.
“There has never been a formal system for numbering rural properties here until now,” Mr Ingram said.
“We’ve been a bit tardy at Bombala getting it together.
“It’s been discussed for many years, but we have just recently put it into action.”
Mr Ingram said the former system of property identification was largely based on the property name and road - “which is no good for emergency services coming from Cooma or Queanbeyan”.
“Bombala Council has adopted the Australian Standard of rural property numbering, which is based on the distance along a road the property’s entrance is from a set datum point,” Mr Ingram said.
“Numbering plates have been put up in property entrances and we’ve also provided map books and data to the emergency services.”
The council met with the emergency services providers - Ambulance, SES, Fire and Rescue, RFS and Police - recently and presented them with a book of strip maps covering all rural roads in the council area.
“Once these maps have been reviewed a final set will be issued,” Mr Ingram said.
“The map books were well received by the agencies and will assist in timely and accurate responses to emergencies in future.”
Mr Ingram said feedback from property owners had been generally positive so far.
“Once you know the rules it’s a reasonably simple system – and it is consistent with neighbouring councils,” he said.
“It’s important for people to understand – and they may find out the hard way – that a lot of services like Telstra and so on won’t connect properties without a street number.
“Now they have that number.”
Bombala Council’s provision of the number plates was only intended for the commencement of the project and won’t continue.
However, Mr Ingram said once property owners were comfortable with their new address, they are welcome to source their own numbers if needed.
“Residents will receive a mail out once the final database is checked.
“That said, residents can begin to use the numbers now to identify their properties.”
In addition to the rural addressing project, the council has identified a number of inconsistencies with local road names.
As a result, a number of roads have been officially named and others have been renamed to remove any ambiguity.
The council is presently working through affixing the new signs to the affected roads.