Council continues to waste time at Land and Environment Court

In this issue we highlight a big win in the Land and Environment Court against Central Coast Council by the Stevens Group and Brand Group to develop 3 restaurants on land at Mount Penang Parklands

This development has been dragging on for almost ten years with Council pulling out every trick in the book to stop it.  See story on Page 5 and my Editor’s comment at the end.

And then as we got to the end of the month the Stevens Group had a massive win with their development at Mardi that has been dragging on for almost 20 years. Full report on that next month.

However, the point about this is Council’s habitual delaying tactics with Development Applications.

At present the Department of Planning’s Development Application Assessment Performance table when compared with other councils is worth noting. However, when compared with our neighbouring council Lake Macquarie it says it all:

Average Assessment Days:

Central Coast   163 days

Lake Macquarie   101 days

Total Development Cost

Central Coast    $536.2 million

Lake Macquarie  $542.9

However, that is not the whole story.
What council has been doing for some time is refusing to accept development applications in the first place due to the most trivial of reasons.  This keeps them off the books.  In other words they are playing games.

When quizzed about this Council’s CEO complains of a lack of staff.  What he is not telling us though is how much time is wasted with Council’s planning staff being tied up with cases before the Land and Environment Court, most of which they lose.  In April and May this year there were eight cases before the Court.  Before getting to court there is always numerous hearings and submissions involving barristers representing both the developer and council and this means more staff time.

The bottom line with all this is that apart from enormous legal costs that council incurs pushing their spurious arguments it also costs the applicant, whether they be a developer or a builder or any other business untold lost time and money.

One particular builder told CCBR that a simple factory on an industrial block took over fifteen months to get the DA through and by that time building costs had escalated so much that his customer, a small manufacturer, didn’t have the extra funds to proceed.

And, this is the point.  While this Council goes to all lengths to use specious  environmental arguments to protect so-called threatened or endangered species, the economic impact on our region is enormous.

The development and building industries in particular and all the businesses they support are suffering as well.  The lost jobs alone is immense.

Instead of a thriving regional economy the Central Coast economy is struggling.

We understand that the newly elected council has its hands tied in respect to management due to a Regulation brought in by the Minister prior to the last election, this expires in September.

After that the CEO has to be held totally to account by the Councillors.  Failure to address this issue will make them equally to blame for the outcomes that the community has had to endure for the past ten years.

OOO

Meanwhile CCBR understands that following the resignation of the Environment and Planning Director after being in the job for only three days the person who it appears should have got the job in the first place has been appointed and will commence in mid June.

Mr Nicholls has over 25 years as an expert urban and regional planner and executive leader of both private and public sector organisations. Luke has held CEO and Chief Planner roles in local government and has been a principal of a national urban planning and economics firm.

The previous appointment, chosen by the CEO David Farmer, was an environmentalist.