Neate v Woloongong City Council (No 2) [2007] NSWLEC 482

Land and Environment Court of New South Wales

CITATION : Neate v Woloongong City Council (No 2) [2007] NSWLEC 482

Applicant: David Neate PARTIES : Respondent: Wollongong City Council

FILE NUMBER(S) : 11377 of 2005

CORAM: Roseth SC

KEY ISSUES: Development Consent :- emergency response to floods

DATES OF HEARING: 01/08/2007

DATE OF JUDGMENT: 7 August 2007

Applicant: LEGAL REPRESENTATIVES: Mr M Staunton, solicitor of Wilshire Webb Staunton Beattie Respondent: Mr M Mantei, solicitor of Kells

JUDGMENT: THE LAND AND ENVIRONMENT COURT OF NEW SOUTH WALES

Roseth SC

7 August 2007

11377 of 2005 David Neate v Wollongong City Council (No 2)

JUDGMENT 1 Senior Commissioner: This is an application under s96 of the Environmental Planning and Assessment Act 1979 to modify the consent issued by this Court on 4 April 2006 by removing the deferred commencement condition and including it as an operational condition. 2 The deferred commencement condition is: This consent shall not operate until the Wollongong City Council is satisfied, after consultation with the State emergency Service, that an effective evacuation strategy that deals with flooding, evacuation flood height triggers, evacuation route and evacuation centres designated in the State Emergency Service's Wollongong and Shellharbour flood plans, including effective flood warning system, has been prepared for the development. 3 The applicant justifies its request on the grounds that it has satisfied the deferred commencement condition to a major degree and the remaining parts may be satisfied before the issue of an Occupancy Certificate. The council disagrees. It takes the position that the applicant has not met the essential parts of the condition. During the hearing the applicant changed its position and agreed to the replacement of the deferred commencement condition by other, more specific, deferred commencement conditions. 4 The Court heard the evidence of four experts: for the council, Mr Pasqualino Silvery, the council's flood plain strategy manager; Mr Steven Opper, director of the emergency management, State Emergency Services; for the applicant, Mr Paul Nicholls and Mr Anthony Barthelmess, both water resources and flooding engineers. Following discussions between them and evidence in the Court, the four experts agreed to the replacement of the deferred commencement condition by four new deferred commencement conditions and one operational condition. 5 Given that the four experts agreed on the above and there were no submissions against, the orders are, in effect agreed. The fact that they are not consent orders reflects only that the parties' representatives did not receive instructions to that effect.