By Gabrielle Costa
VICTORIAN councils – including the City of Maribyrnong – are not paying proper heed to the law when deciding on the fate of planning applications.
The finding was contained in a report by the state’s financial watchdog, Auditor-General Des Pearson, who examined six councils – Maribyrnong, Boroondara in Melbourne’s east, Casey in Melbourne’s outer east, and the country municipalities of Greater Shepparton, Bass Coast and Pyrenees.
In Victoria, planning authorities, including councils, are supposed to make decisions on planning applications in light of relevant laws, such as the Planning and Environment and Act, as well as local planning schemes.
The report said the study, which was designed to identify problems and recommend potential improvement areas across the state as a whole, found that 78 per cent of the time, councillors made planning decisions based on reports provided by council staff that “did not give adequate consideration to matters specified in the Act, planning scheme or both”.
The report went on to say that “considerable improvement in the quality assurance provided by senior council planning staff over the accuracy and processing of permit applications is required”.
The Auditor-General’s report did not contain a breakdown of data for the individual councils studied and presented only broad findings across the half-dozen municipalities.
The report contained wide-ranging recommendations for improvements.
The Municipal Association of Victoria acknowledged that the report had identified administrative issues at the local government level but because only six were scrutinised, “we are yet to understand how widespread these issues might be across the sector,” president Dick Gross said.
Star sought comment from the City of Maribyrnong but no response was received by deadline.
