A PLANNED church building on Mt Baimbridge Road has locals concerned about noise and traffic once it is built, and they have lodged objections with the Southern Grampians Shire.

Grace Fellowship has lodged a town planning application to build a fit-for-purpose assembly on the six-acre property for 120 (and future expansion up to 200) people but some neighbours aren’t convinced it won’t disrupt their lives.

Local resident, Maree Willis said whilst she is not opposed to a church as such, she believes it will be operating too often to be a good fit for the area and would even put the local bandicoot population at risk.

“They want to have this going all the time, because they need to recoup the money they’ve spent on the church,” she said.

“They want to be able to hold functions there (up to) 12 midnight on Saturday and Friday night.

“It's just the noise, (and) there is no traffic plan on how they're going to cope with the excess traffic. They’re going to have functions for up to 200 people.

“There’s actually bandicoots out there … so we don’t drive very fast.”

Ms Willis said she believed the lighting on the property would also be an issue on the car park side of the proposed building, with illumination spilling onto neighbouring properties.

She also claimed the building would not be soundproofed adequately for the “happy clappy” services.

“Their noise report that they've done … actually states that the buildings that they're building will not be sufficiently able to absorb all that sound,” Ms Willis said.

“They said that they wouldn't recommend using it of a night.”

She said other residents also had shared similar concerns that it would end up being “more than a church” and would become “a whole function centre”.

“It’s zoned for rural living out there,” Ms Willis said.

“This is not rural and it’s not living.”

But the church’s pastor said their plans weren’t so grandiose and they just wanted to be prepared to hold a few extra small meetings at other times, as well as some weddings.

Pastor Rodger Garland also said they didn’t currently hold evening services, but even if they did, “that would all be done and dusted by eight o'clock”.

“The provision to be able to go to midnight on a Friday or a Saturday night, it's for the handful of times in a year … where somebody might want to hire it for a wedding,” he said.

“We would expect that to happen two or three times a year.

“Might be a youth group there on a Friday night (and) a few parents dropping some people off.”

With the traffic concerns, Ps Garland said he is more than happy to work with the shire to address any issues including access from Mt Baimbridge Road.

He also said he was aware of the local bandicoot population and the plan for the property was laid out in such a way that not a single tree would need to be felled.

Asked by The Spectator about the potential for noise, he said the church had “gone over and above” to address that issue, hiring an audio engineer to assess normal background noise on the property and using the report to help design the building.

“They’re double-glazed windows, fully insulated,” Ps Garland said.

“The building is engineered (so that) if we stay within those parameters - which we must do - the sound is not supposed to go past the boundaries.

“So that that is the sort of care that we are taking, we are thinking about our neighbours.”

Ps Garland said he didn’t take this personally, as he was told objections were typical but believed once the church was established the opinions of locals would change.

“We expect this resistance, we understand that's par for the course,” he said.

“Even the council told us to expect it and that's the only way that people can have a voice, so we respect those voices.

“I believe when it all settles down, that we will be an asset - one to the community, because the Hamilton community at large is what we're building for.

“But I believe we’ll even be an asset to the neighborhood.”

Objections to the planning application of the church close today at 4pm.

Southern Grampians Shire were contacted for comment but did not reply in time for print.