Councillors will be presented with a recommendation suggesting they don’t support a petition by Bendigo’s faith-based groups calling for a halt in poker machine increases.

They will also vote on the Kangaroo Flat Sports Club’s application for 12 more poker machines, which, if approved, would give the club 60 poker machines.

The petition has 525 signatures and calls on council to oppose the granting of additional poker machine licences without the majority support of residents and ratepayers as determined by an independent poll.

But council planning and development director Prue Mansfield said it would be highly unlikely that the Minister for Planning would support a planning policy that contained such conditions.

“To make a decision about a planning application it needs to be weighed up against the planning scheme,” she said. “For changes to the planning scheme we need the approval of the Minister for Planning.

“It is highly unlikely that the minister for planning is going to agree to such a policy when playing on electronic gaming machines is a legal recreational activity.

“We know we were the first council to have a gaming policy on where they should be and where they’re accessible but not convenient.”

Kangaroo Flat Sports Club, at Dower Park, picked up 12 extra machines in the state government’s auction of gaming machine entitlements last year.

Ms Mansfield said that having evaluated all the points in its policy, on balance, the application was neutral. “It means we neither support or object – we’re neutral about this application,” she said.

“One of the criteria asks if it is in an area where there are other recreational activities – the answer is yes; and is it in a low-income area – the answer is yes.

“We did an assessment of what the economic impact was, which came in neutral.”