Councillor Jess Jennings received unanimous support for one of his three notices of motion put to last week's ordinary meeting.

Council agreed to support the Australian Local Government Association (ALGA) in calling for the next Australian Government "not to leave local communities behind", especially financially.

In addition to supporting ALGA's seventeen national funding priorities by writing to Calare candidates and the shadow and federal minister for local government, council will use this as an opportunity to lobby for a bypass.

It will apply to Infrastructure Australia for the Bathurst Bypass to be "a new national priority list item" and contact relevant stakeholders, including freight and trucking sectors, to invite them to support the application.

The resolution follows months of lobbying from resident Lorraine Sargeant, who has called on council to make the bypass a priority to reduce the number of heavy vehicles in residential areas.

READ MORE: Resident is petitioning to show support for a Bathurst bypass

Council has taken notice, with the resolution to apply to Infrastructure Australia coming shortly after it included a $100,000 allocation for a Bathurst bypass study in its drafter 2022-23 budget.

"A bypass around Bathurst is something that fits with the ALGA priorities and therefore is an opportunity to bring it into the current discussion and debate and particularly highlight it in this federal election campaign," Cr Jennings said.

"That said, it's also an issue that's going to be with us well after this election and probably a few more down the track.

"The key thing that I think that has to happen here is that Bathurst council has to enlist forces greater than itself, external to itself, to actually pick the ball up on this and run with it."

Infrastructure Australia is the nation's independent infrastructure advisor, which provides research and advice to governments, industry and the community on the infrastructure investments and reforms that will benefit all Australians.

The website refers to its infrastructure priority list as "a credible pipeline of unfunded nationally significant proposals."

Projects on the list are categorised as: early-stage (Stage 1); potential investment options (Stage 2); and investment-ready proposals (Stage 3).

Concerns were raised at last week's council meeting that the bypass project might not be far enough advanced to be put on the list.

Even council's director of Environmental, Planning and Building Services, Neil Southorn, was unsure how successful council would be, saying: "It is always hard to know what agencies such as Infrastructure Australia will require as a minimum."

However, Cr Jennings is confident that the project would be significant enough for the proposal to be taken seriously even without an identified route or concept designs.

"On the existing infrastructure list, there's plenty of projects on there which are a lot less significant than a bypass of a major regional centre," he said, adding that some projects were as simple as only slightly widening two-lane roads.

"... They are not actually as ambitious as what we're asking for and also do not necessarily deliver the same benefits that we would be able to deliver, so in that sense I think we have a fair chance, a better than even chance, of getting our project on their list."

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