A childcare centre at West Gosford and a dual occupancy at Terrigal have been approved after both applicants skipped the queue at Council and went to the Land and Environment Court with deemed refusals.
A deemed refusal meant Council did not deal with the application within a certain time frame.
As of July 31, 2026, Council was defending 32 appeals in the NSW LEC, and 20 were deemed refusal appeals.
The childcare centre was approved for 1 Debenham Road South, West Gosford and the dual occupancy for 2 Raymond Terrace Terrigal.
Currently, according to September 1 minutes from the planning and environment committee, council is facing 20 deemed refusal appeals and another 12 are applicants appealing decisions actually made by council.
That is a total of 32 cases.
On average, council’s planning department receives about 182 development applications each month.
At the end of July it had 647 DAs outstanding with 63 more than 12 months’ old.
But the figures are better than this time last year and the time taken to assess DAs is steadily reducing to less than four months now on average.
In July it was an average of 114 days.
The first meeting of Council’s new committee, called the Land and Environment Court Appeals Working Group was held on August 17.
Its confidential minutes are to be noted at the September 22 meeting of council.
The Working Group, made up of the mayor, deputy mayor, and three other councillors, meets monthly in confidential sessions to receive updates on the status and conduct of LEC appeals.
This committee was adopted by Council in November last year over concerns about more than $3m council spent on external legal costs in the previous financial year, mostly relating to LEC appeals.
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