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Can compliance with planning controls be satisfied by deferred commencement conditions?
Section 4.16(3) of the Environmental Planning and Assessment Act 1979 (NSW) allows a consent authority to grant a ‘deferred commencement consent’. The subsection provides: ‘A development consent may be granted subject to a condition that the consent is not to…
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Can a modification application be amended?
Consent authorities assessing applications to modify development consents, usually under s 4.55 of the Environmental Planning and Assessment Act 1979 (EPA Act), have generally assumed that they could accept an amended form of the modification application. However, a recent decision…
Councils cannot unknowingly give owner’s consent when granting development consent
Landowner’s consent is required for the making of a development application. It must be provided by the time a consent authority determines whether to grant development consent. It is also a recognised principle that when a consent authority grants development…
ALERT: Amendment to Crown Land Management Regulation – Removal of POM Adoption Deadline
On 4 June 2021 the Crown Land Management Regulation 2018 (CLM Regulation) was amended to remove the deadline for councils managing Crown land (Council Crown land managers) to adopt plans of management for that land by 30 June 2021, and removing…
Is the GIPA application valid? The NCAT considers s41(1)(e) of the GIPA Act
The NSW Civil and Administrative Review Tribunal recently found an application made for information under the Government Information (Public Access) Act 2009 (GIPA Act) to be invalid because the application did not include sufficient information for the agency to identify the…
What is a non-pecuniary conflict of interest?
On 4 May 2021, a Principal Member of the Occupational Division of the New South Wales Civil and Administrative Tribunal (‘NCAT‘) found that a Sydney metropolitan council’s mayor had a non-pecuniary conflict of interest in a matter which caused him…
ALERT: Proposed Changes to NSW Privacy Laws – Release of Consultation Draft of Privacy and Personal Information Protection Amendment Bill 2021 including introduction of proposed mandatory notification of data breaches scheme
On 7 May 2021, the State Government released for public consultation a draft of the Privacy and Personal Information Protection Amendment Bill 2021 (‘Draft Bill‘), which proposes to amend the Privacy and Personal Information Protection Act 1998 (‘PPIP Act‘) namely…
UPDATE: Court of Appeal overturns LEC decision on dominant use of land ‘mining’ for rating purposes
In June 2020, we blogged about a decision of the Land and Environment Court (LEC) which significantly raised the rating liability for mining companies that ‘hold’ land for mining purposes under the Local Government Act 1993. Since then, the landowner…
Land and Environment Court considers what constitutes the wilful delay or obstruction of an authorised officer
The Land and Environment Court’s decision in McClelland v Environment Protection Authority [2021] NSWLEC 25, considers what constitutes the wilful delay or obstruction of an authorised officer in the exercise of the officer’s powers of investigation, contrary to s211(3) of…
Court clarifies the meaning of ‘pollution’ and finds civil liability for downstream erosion
Justice Preston, Chief Judge of the Land and Environment Court of New South Wales, recently issued judgment against the Sydney Water Corporation (Sydney Water) in proceedings brought by JK Williams Staff Pty Ltd (Williams) for the significant erosion of the…
ALERT: NSW Heritage Act Review and Discussion Paper
On 7 April 2021, the NSW Government announced a major review of the Heritage Act 1977 (‘the Act‘). This review is the first since 2007. Major reforms to the Act have not been made since 1999.
Reasonable searches in GIPA Act applications
A decision of the Appeal Panel of the NSW Civil and Administrative Tribunal (Tribunal), changed the way that the Tribunal considers applications for review under the Government Information (Public Access) Act 2009 (GIPA Act) where an agency finds that information…