Grounds for legal challenge

COUNCIL has staked out the pitch in the opening round of its legal battle to overturn concept approval for a coastal development on the Northern Beaches.

Coffs Harbour City Council has started its fight against Sandy Shores concept plan approval.

COFFS Harbour City Council has staked out the pitch in the opening round of its legal battle to overturn concept approval for a coastal development on the Northern Beaches.

The legal grounds on which the Coffs Harbour City Council has challenged the validity of concept plan approval for a 200-lot subdivision at Hearnes Lake have been identified and the council’s points of claim document has been filed in the Land and Environment Court.

The council began judicial review proceedings last month following the decision on December 20, 2010, by the former NSW Planning Minister, Tony Kelly, to grant a concept plan approval for the Sandy Shores development site at Hearnes Lake, under the now defunct Part 3A planning legislation of the previous State Government.

In its points of claim, the council has raised three grounds of challenge to the concept plan approval.

The first is that concept plan approval was given without the existence of a current set of director-general’s requirements (DGRs).

DGRs are a list of environmental assessment requirements identified by the Department of Planning’s director-general during the commencement of the planning assessment process. They cover social, economic and environmental issues that are relevant to the site and proposed development outcome.

In the case of the Sandy Shores application, a set of DGRs was issued in October 2006.

Those DGRs expired after two years and, as the formal environmental assessment for the project was not lodged until January 2009, Coffs Harbour City Council’s view is that no DGRs existed at the time the concept plan approval was granted.

The second claim is that the concept plan approval is uncertain.

Dated December 20, 2010, it contains inconsistent statements about whether Part 3A of the Environmental Planning and Assessment Act 1979 applies to future approvals of the project. It is the council’s position that these inconsistencies render the concept plan approval void.

The third and final claim relates to the fact that the concept plan approval was not granted to a legal entity or the proponent.

The Land and Environment Court has directed the current NSW Planning Minister to provide reasons for the decision to grant the concept plan approval. Once that information is received, the council may file amended points of claim.

The amended points of claim will then form the final legal grounds for the challenge that the council’s lawyers will present to the Land and Environment Court.

Originally published as Grounds for legal challenge