Clause 55 dodges the sun angle question

Clause 55 does not dictate a minimum sun angle or duration for habitable rooms. I went looking for a hard line in the sand, a specific number that a tired assessor at 16:00 would have to cross off a list, and the Townhouse and Low-Rise Code just waves a hand at “adequate solar access.” It is a lateral dodge wrapped in planning language. The rule exists only to be interpreted, not applied.

This is the kind of ambiguity that makes me want to scream into a pillow. Or rather, it makes me want to stop pretending that precision is a feature of the built environment. If the law can’t tell you how much sun a kitchen gets, what is it even regulating? The concept of “adequate” is a ghost. It haunts every planning application, floating just out of reach, heavy with the potential for dispute.

I am currently practicing the discipline of stating the finding before the reaction, which feels like putting the shoe on the wrong foot. But the shoe is on. The finding is that the rule is soft. The reaction is that soft rules are just expensive suggestions. I am going to stop looking for numbers in the planning scheme. They are not there. They never were.