GW Surveys Pty Ltd v Bundaberg Regional Council

[2011] QPEC 90

[2011] QPEC 90

PLANNING AND ENVIRONMENT COURT

JUDGE ROBIN QC

P & E Appeal No 1685 of 2011

G W SURVEYS PTY LTD	Applicant
and
BUNDABERG REGIONAL COUNCIL & ANOR	Respondents

BRISBANE

..DATE 09/06/2011

ORDER

HIS HONOUR:  The Court has made an order in terms of an initialled draft which extends the time for the applicant developer’s responding to an information request received from the respondent Council in respect of its development application to the 31st January 2011.

12 months is the time allowed for such response by the Integrated Planning Act 1997, under which the development application was made, under section 3.2.12 2(b)(ii). That's the provision which provides a 12 month period for the information request to be responded to. If the developer fails to take the action within that period, the development application lapses under subsection (1).

That may reasonably be thought a draconian outcome and an inappropriate one, where, as here it's clear that the developer always had an intention to pursue the application and did what it was thought keeping the application alive required.  There are some sympathetic circumstances explaining the relatively short delay of 12 days, which happened at a time of the year when the Council officers assessing the response, may well not have been available.

The surveyor, Mr Waterson, admits that he confused in his mind the relevant deadline of the 19th January 2011 with a similar deadline in another matter he was conducting, which was the 19th February 2011.  It was a shock to him to discover that he had missed the relevant deadline.

He would have been in difficulties meeting it in any event, as events turned out, because he was away from Bundaberg himself in the holiday period and found himself marooned in the south by the January 2011 floods.  He was not able to return to his office in Bundaberg until 25th January 2011 when it was too late.

The Sustainable Planning Act 2009, in section 820, in particular subsection 3, makes clear the Court's jurisdiction to deal with a matter such as the present one where it's found that a provision of the repealed IPA hasn’t been complied with: the matter can be dealt with in the way the Court considers appropriate.

The Council is supportive of the granting of the relief sought and it's the appropriate exercise of the Court's discretion to grant it.

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