THEY say you should never commission a report unless you know what it is going to say – and that’s certainly the case in council.
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Council planning rules require developers to bear the cost of all reports associated with a development application, which might include traffic surveys, noise reports, heritage surveys, engineer’s assessments, statements of environmental effects and a range of other information.
The issue, though, is that since the developer is paying for the report, it is up to the developer to engage the consultant to write the report. And you can be sure no report has ever been submitted with a DA recommending that DA be rejected.
This is not to question the expertise, nor the professionalism, of the consultants preparing those reports.
All must be properly qualified to present a report to council and none would stupidly risk their own career and professional reputation by preparing a report that failed on the facts. But these issues are rarely black and white and so there will always be many different versions of the truth.
Just as opposing parties in a court dispute might have opposing groups of lawyers each telling their client they have a strong case and a very good chance of victory, two groups of architects, noise consultants, town planners or arborists might come to different findings in reports to council.
The Dunkeld Pet Kennel case that cost Bathurst ratepayers more than $100,000 in legal fees after the matter went to the Land and Environment Court was a case in point.
In that debate, both the proponent of the kennel and the objecting residents living nearby engaged professional noise consultants to support their arguments.
Both reports met council’s guidelines in terms of expertise and yet they returned very different results.
The applicant’s report recommended noise from the kennels would not exceed acceptable levels; the residents’ report found otherwise. Councillors are then put in an impossible position trying to determine which recommendation they should follow.
The solution might be for council to engage its own suite of professional consultants to work on DAs and to charge back the cost of those professionals to the applicant.
It would not end the arguments but would at least provide greater clarity for councillors who would soon become familiar with each consultant’s work. It’s not a perfect solution, but it’s a step in the right direction.
