PLANNING Minister Justin Madden has used his ministerial powers to revoke a court decision that allowed a handful of Werribee South boatshed owners the right to stay in their sheds without signing a required council licence.
The Wyndham City Council has been fighting the hold-out shed owners for more than three years because they refuse to obtain a $250 licence requiring them to meet specific conditions on safety, amenity and insurance.
The rebel owners at Campbells Cove and Baileys Beach claim any licensing system would erode their proprietary rights to the sheds, which were built on foreshore Crown land.
Some were built as long ago as the 1930s.
Wyndham corporate services director Stephen Griffin produced the minister’s letter at the Sunshine Magistrates’ Court last Thursday, indicating the owners’ “permissive occupancy” rights to occupy Crown land was cancelled.
The Lands Act allows the minister to withdraw the occupancy rights after 30 days’ notice.
However, that right had been recognised in a test case at the Magistrates’ Court against Werribee South resident Duncan Colbron late last year.
Mr Colbron owned one of the beach’s 144 timber and fibro fishing shacks for 11 years, but recently sold it, claiming it had been the subject of vindictive vandalism.
Mr Griffin said there are only six owners refusing to sign the three-year-licences.
“The council’s policy on this is that the boatsheds remain, but managed under the licensed agreement. We have never had any intention to get rid of the sheds,” he said.
Wyndham council collects rates and manages the sheds, and is believed to be the first council to impose a licence system on any of the 1860 beachfront sheds around Port Phillip and Western Port bays.
Mr Griffin said the next move was now in the hands of the defiant boat-shed owners.
Mr Colbron said the new decision opened up a “whole new can of worms” because the minister’s letter did not revoke the rights of those who had already signed the licences.
