Pre DA consultations

Changes to Pre-DA Community Consultation requirements for COVID-19

The Pre-DA Community Consultation Guidelines outline a range of consultation processes a proponent is required to undertake for significant developments.

Given the current declared public health emergency our advice is to refrain from hosting physical "face-to-face engagement sessions".

The intention behind this requirement is to reach as much of the community potentially affected by a proposed development. This could still be achieved without the need for "face-to-face engagement sessions", and the planning and land authority would be open to consider other creative ways of engaging with the community in an indirect or virtual manner.

Letterbox drops, newspaper advertising and online information for the public is a reasonable starting point under the current circumstances.

An example that will be accepted as a reasonable substitute for "face-to-face engagement sessions" could involve targeted letter box drops with an invitation to view an online presentation or even a “live feed” from a certain date/time, with the ability to provide online comments or pose questions.  This can be achieved fairly easily using current publicly available social media platforms.