Australia, May 27 -- New South Wales Land and Environment Court issued text of the following judgement on April 28:

1. COMMISSIONER: This is a Class 1 Development Appeal pursuant to s 8.7 of the Environmental Planning and Assessment Act 1979 (EPA Act) being an appeal against the refusal of Development Application DA/1024/2023 (Civil Works Application LA/1741/2017) seeking consent for a proposed new vehicular access to an existing garage (Proposed Development) on public land adjacent to 18 Byron Street, Coogee legally described as Lot D in DP 105894 (the Site).

2. The Court arranged a conciliation conference under s 34AA(2) of the Land and Environment Court Act 1979 (LEC Act) between the parties, which has been held on 28 April 2025. I presided over the conciliation conference.

3. A single Joint Expert Report (JER) was prepared by Mr Jason Rider (Development Engineer) and Mr Joseph Edmonds (Town Planner), for the Respondent, and Mr Dean Brodie (Consulting Traffic Engineer) and Mr Dave Moody (Consulting Town Planner) for the Applicant and was filed on 26 March 2025. The JER provides that during the course of the joint conclave, Mr Brodie produced amended plans varying the proposed levels for the driveway and footpath within the road reserve and that as a consequence, there are no items of disagreement between any of the experts in respect to the Contentions raised in the Statement of facts and Contentions filed 13 November 2024 (SOFAC), and the Applicant's Statement of Facts and Contentions in Reply filed 10 December 2024 (SOFAC in Reply).

4. The history of the development works undertaken at the Site for the garage is set out at [16]-[17] of the SOFAC and in Part A of the SOFAC in Reply and it is noted that the parties remain in disagreement as to the nature of works which were approved under DA/669/2012 and subsequent modification applications.

5. However, there being no remaining matters in dispute in these proceedings, the parties have agreed to resolve the proceedings by way of an agreement pursuant to s 34 of the LEC Act.

6. At the conciliation conference, the parties reached agreement as to the terms of a decision in the proceedings that would be acceptable to the parties. This decision involved the Court upholding the appeal and granting development consent to the development application subject to conditions.

7. Under s 34(3) of the LEC Act, I must dispose of the proceedings in accordance with the parties' decision if the parties' decision is a decision that the Court could have made in the proper exercise of its functions. In making the orders to give effect to the agreement between the parties, I was not required to, and have not, made any merit assessment of the issues that were originally in dispute between the parties.

8. The parties' decision involves the Court exercising the function under s 4.16 of the EPA Act to grant consent to the development application.

9. There are jurisdictional prerequisites that must be satisfied before this function can be exercised. The parties identified the jurisdictional prerequisites of relevance in these proceedings to be a number of provisions in the Randwick Local Environmental Plan 2012 (RLEP). The parties explained how the jurisdictional prerequisites have been satisfied in a jurisdictional statement provided to the court.

10. The applicant is the owner of the Land.

*Rest of the document can be viewed at: (https://www.caselaw.nsw.gov.au/decision/1967f55383a5125f800fd61e)

Disclaimer: Curated by HT Syndication.