Belco's high-rise growth comes with a further cost: escalating crime

The Belconnen Alliance of High Apartments (BAHA) is a collective group of executive committees representing thousands of apartment owners across 11 complexes within the Belconnen Town Centre.

In the alliance's pre-budget submission, it was noted the town centre had experienced "a significant uplift in crime ... that needs to be urgently addressed".

"Due to the rise in opportunistic crime following large-scale development, residents of the [town centre] now feel unsafe and are growing frustrated with the ACT government, specifically with law enforcement," the report said.

"The ratio of police officers on the beat is not consistent with the population size of Belconnen Town Centre and as a result, reported crime goes unanswered and residents now feel unsafe in their own buildings."

Now with well over 100,000 residents since massive new high-rise towers were built in the town centre over the past six years, Belconnen is consistently over-represented in police crime statistics compared with other large ACT residential zones such as Tuggeranong.

The proliferation of high-rise apartments has led to a spike in specific crime types, particularly burglary, trespass and stolen property such as mail and parcels. Intruders often gain access to buildings via the automatic underground carpark gates when residents enter and leave, then break into the underground locked storage areas.

At the Cirrus complex, for instance, which opened in September 2021, members of the strata management have had to share the cost of $140,000 for added security measures including improved theft-hardened lock mechanisms for storage areas, new steel striker plates to prevent common access doors being jimmied open, and $40,000 for new security cameras.

"We have received little support from the police," the Cirrus building representative reported to the alliance.

"In fact, every incident is reported to the police with footage captured by our cameras and provided on a USB, but the police have been witnessed by our building manager throwing the USB in the bin. We have not had any follow up visits on site."

In the police data released for the past six months, Belconnen ranked second behind the inner north police district for reported thefts, burglaries and assaults, and had more cars stolen than any other ACT zone.

Belconnen has the highest rate of property damage across Canberra. In the past six months, one in four property damage reports in the ACT were from Belconnen alone.

Also raised by alliance members in their submission was the lack of an appropriate ACT planning code for a minimum apartment security standard.

Issues such as cheap drive motors installed by developers on garage access roller doors are seen to contribute to security problems by being slow to raise and lower. Residents are encouraged to wait until the security door lowers and seals so intruders can't sneak in. The body corporate at the huge Wayfarer apartment block recently spent $60,000 on a new roller motor to speed up the access process.

Common area building access points which were not secure when the building was handed over by the developer in turn passes the cost onto the apartment purchasers, who have to have rectification via their body corporate fees. When those fees rise, this adds pressure for rental prices increases.

Belconnen Community Council convenor Lachlan Butler said he was aware of the issues raised by the apartment alliance and his group, too, would be raising the problem of insufficient police resources given the 100,000+ population size of the district.

Independent Belco Party candidate Alan Tutt expressed his alarm that Belconnen apartment residents felt unsafe entering and leaving their common areas.

"I can well understand the frustration that people are feeling when they are paying such high rates and charges but they are not getting the services and resources they expect," he said.

"We will be out there [at Belconnen] on Saturday talking to the residents so we can get a good understanding of what's going on."

ACT police said they were aware of community concerns regarding crime within apartment complexes in the Belconnen area.

"Where operational priorities allow police will conduct regular patrols in the Belconnen area, but it is important to note that crime in the ACT is not limited to one suburb or region, nor is it targeted towards apartments specifically," they said in a statement.

"ACT Policing take all reports of crime seriously and encourages members of the community to report anti-social behaviour to police."

Some of the comments by alliance's apartment representatives in their submission included:

Some key police advice to apartment owners was: