Members

All Councillors are entitled to attend and vote at Development Control Committee (DCC) Site Inspections.

Dates and times

DCC Site Inspections are held when Councillors at the DCC meeting wish to view the site of a proposed development in order to become more familiar with the issues of the application before Council.

Site Inspections are conducted on the Wednesday morning after a DCC meeting.

Councillors leave the Council Chambers at 8:00am.

If due to a Public Holiday the DCC meeting is held on a Tuesday, the Site Inspections will be held on a Thursday.

Similarly, if the Wednesday is a Public Holiday, the Site Inspections will be held on the Thursday.

Agenda

The DCC Site Inspection agenda lists the sites to be inspected.

The order of sites to be inspected can be obtained by calling Council's Governance Department on 9391 7001 after 10:00am on the day following the DCC meeting.

Generally, the order of Site Inspections will commence in the Vaucluse Ward and progress through the municipality to the Paddington Ward.

This order may only be changed if the DCC determines an alternate order of inspections at the Monday meeting.

Exact times for site visits cannot be given for any particular inspection due to the differing issues and complexities of issues to be considered at each location.

What happens at a Site Inspection?

The Councillors will assemble outside the property which is the subject of the development application (DA).

Interested parties will be invited to address the Councillors in the following order:

1. objectors
2. applicant or applicant's representative.

If an objector addressed the DCC on the Monday evening, they will only be permitted to clarify the matters raised at that meeting, if invited to do so by the Councillors on site. No further address to Councillors will be allowed.

If an objector did not address the DCC, they will be invited to make a four minute presentation to the Councillors.

Objectors may invite Councillors to visit their property to view their concerns.

After objectors have addressed the Councillors, the applicant or their representative will be invited to address the Councillors.

After presentations

After all presentations have been made, the Councillors will discuss the matters raised and will make a recommendation on the DA. This recommendation is submitted to the next meeting of the DCC.

The applicant and objectors will be advised of what the recommendation is.

Recommendations of the Site Inspections

The Councillors at the Site Inspection may make the following recommendations to the DCC:

• to adopt the Council Officer's recommendation without change
• to adopt the Council Officer's recommendation with minor changes
• to adopt the Council Officer's recommendation with substantial changes
• to adopt some other recommendation.

Next step of the process

The next step of the process is that the recommendations of the Site Inspections are submitted to the next meeting of the DCC for consideration.

At this meeting, objectors and the applicant will not be permitted to address the Committee again but they will be able to submit late correspondence for the Councillors to consider. The late correspondence should be forwarded to Council's Governance Department by 12:00pm on the day of the meeting.

To see how the DCC considers these recommendations, see the DCC meeting procedure.