The NSW Civil and Administrative has recently considered the extent to which a local council carries on a business for the purposes of the Fair Trading Act 1987 and the Competition and Consumer Act 2010 (CCA). The judgment contains significant…

The NSW Government recently released for public consultation, a discussion paper entitled “Building Stronger Foundations”. The release of this discussion paper comes in the wake of a number of recent media reports of allegedly shoddy building practices, the failure of…

In Environment Protection Authority v Davis [2019] NSWLEC 79 (EPA v Davis), Pain J considered the liability of the general manager of a company for offences arising from the company’s provision of false information to the Environment Protection Authority (EPA),…

The Privacy and Personal Information Protection Act 1998 (PPIP Act) creates 12 Information Protection Principles that NSW public sector agencies must follow when handling personal information. One of these principles is the restriction on disclosing personal information that a public sector…

The Supreme Court of New South Wales recently held that three media companies were the ‘publishers’ of comments made by members of the public on their public Facebook pages for the purposes of a defamation claim.  The case sets a…

The Court of Appeal has clarified what the word ‘land‘ means in the context of s57(1)(e) of the Heritage Act 1977 (Act) which requires approval to be obtained before development is carried out ‘in relation to the land’ on which a State heritage…

The Local Government Amendment Act 2019 (‘Amendment Act‘) received assent on 25 June 2019. The Amendment Act introduces several amendments to the Local Government Act 1993 (‘LG Act‘), two of which are considered to be of particular interest to those…

We recently blogged about the need for conditions of consent to be final and certain here. However, in another recent judgment, the Land & Environment Court has discussed how to provide flexibility in a condition of consent when the information…

Enforcement agencies (Agency), such as local councils, regularly use penalty notices (PINs) such as for environment and planning offences under the Environmental Planning and Assessment Act 1979 (EPA Act) and the Protection of the Environment Operations Act 1997 (POEO Act). A…

The governing body of Council is frequently required to consider sensitive documentation when making decisions.  Sometimes, the Council needs to make arrangements to secure the information provided to councillors. In  Barrak v City of Parramatta Council [2019] NSWLEC 59, the Court…

The NSW Civil and Administrative Tribunal (NCAT) recently considered an application under the Government Information (Public Access) Act 2009 (GIPA Act) for review of a decision of the Information Commissioner. While the Information Commissioner’s decisions when reviewing GIPA Act decisions…

This update will consider two recent decisions of the Land and Environment Court in which Commissioners, when determining appeals in Class 1 of the Court’s jurisdiction, declined to grant development consent on jurisdictional grounds.