Welcome to the first edition of Envisage, an initiative of HopgoodGanim Lawyers’ Planning and Environment team designed to provide you with a quarterly snapshot of significant legislative and policy change, important Court decisions and a grab-bag of information and events impacting upon the planning, development and environment space.
This quarter has been a busy one on the policy front, with David Nicholls, James Ireland, and I all attending the State Government’s full day 2015 Planning Summit at the end of July. In Thomas Buckley’s summary of “What’s happened to the Planning and Development Bill,” he aims to bring you up to speed on the state of play for the State Government’s planning reform agenda. The final quarter of 2015 will be a significant one for planning policy in Queensland, with the State Government to release its draft planning reform legislation. As always, through our practitioners’ involvement with peak industry bodies we endeavour to remain at the forefront of planning reform and provide you with our insights as draft legislation becomes available. On the environmental planning side of our practice, Ruby Rayner provides an overview of the Sustainable Ports Development Bill, directed at implementing certain commitments made in relation to the conservation of the Great Barrier Reef World Heritage Area. This quarter has also seen three of our practitioners, David Nicholls, Gemma Chadwick and Olivia Williamson, speaking at UDIA (Qld) workshops about the State Government’s coastal planning agenda, following on from the declaration of new erosion prone areas and the release of draft coastal management districts for consultation in July.
Rounding out our inaugural edition are articles about the Brisbane City Council’s new infrastructure charges resolution by Robyn Lamb, and
recent planning developments on the Gold Coast by Olivia Williamson. Gemma Chadwick analyses a recent Court decision in which she acted for the developer and sets out a number of important principles in relation to permissible change. David Nicholls highlights the egregious nature of new maximum penalties for undertaking development on a local heritage place without a development permit and James Ireland, in the first of his regular column on resumption and compensation, examines a recent decision of the Court of Appeal in relation to
valuation methodology.
We trust that you will enjoy Envisage and find the updates useful. We always welcome feedback and are happy to receive suggestions regarding content that you would like to see in upcoming publications.