ACT government set to lodge development applications for four new public housing blocks in Canberra

While the government has scaled back the four developments after a public backlash earlier this year, there remains sustained opposition to the Chapman site due to planning issues and bushfire risks and a number of concerns about other sites.

The developments are part of the government's public housing program to re-house tenants from blocks sold off in the city centre and along Northbourne Avenue as part of its 'urban renewal' efforts, as well as house others on the waiting list.

Since the sites were announced in March this year, various community groups have raised concerns ranging the size of the proposals to keeping trees in the area to traffic, safety of access and, in Holder, the future of the Bill Kennedy Memorial Park.

The government has now confirmed it will lodge DAs "in coming weeks" for the new developments in Mawson on Shackleton Circuit; Chapman on Darwinia Terrace; Holder on Stapylton Street and Wright on Diesendorf Street.

The changes to the proposals since they were first announced include:

At Mawson [block 29, section 36]: cutting dwelling numbers from 11 townhouses to eight, repositioning the townhouses and ensuring access to the site only from Mawson Drive and maintaining a cluster of trees at the southern end of the block.

At Chapman [block 1, section 45]: cutting dwelling numbers from 30 to 20 homes, changing design from rows of units to duplex townhouses, allowing access only on Darwinia Terrace and higher bushfire building standards than required.

At Holder [block 2 section 21]: cutting dwelling numbers from 30 to 16 homes, moving internal roads further away from existing homes, creating a landscape buffer, retaining all existing trees on site, reducing building height from two to one storey and adding footpaths to the local oval and shops.

At Wright [block 2 section 29]: reducing building height from three to two storeys on Gornall Street, cutting dwelling numbers from 32 to 26 homes and ensuring access only from Gornall Street.

A Darwinia Park Action Group spokeswoman said the new plans were only offering "an improved technical design for what remains a bad plan" to relocate disadvantaged Canberrans to a bushfire prone area on the rural fringe with few services and "no community consent" about re-purposing community-zoned land.

"It wasn't acceptable in 2014 when the government halted an aged care facility there, it isn't acceptable in 2017," she said.

She said the group was not opposed to having more 'salt and pepper' public housing in the area, and they had proposed alternative sites including using former Mr Fluffy blocks, but the government had stayed with that site as it was at no cost, and was part of the federal government's asset recycling scheme.

A spokesman for Housing Minister Yvette Berry said the government had now "completed" consultations with individual community groups on all the proposed developments.

But he said the government would keep working with the Holder community action group on the future of the memorial park, and Wright residents' group on a 'dedicated community facility' to be housed on the same block.

"The taskforce has found the process of working with smaller representative groups a valuable part of the design process and has appreciated the effects of the various stakeholder groups and community councils that have been involved."

The government is also still awaiting approval for DAs for two public housing sites each in Monash and Throsby, while DAs are currently out for public comment for a proposal in Greenway and two sites in Gungahlin town centre.

- With Katie Burgess