Councillors voted in favour of meeting on a weekly basis and will continue to operate the Development Control Unit (DCU) in accordance with MidCoast Council’s policy and procedures.
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
$0/
(min cost $0)
or signup to continue reading
This decision was made when councillors met at the October ordinary meeting.
The DCU was established in 2016 to remove time consuming, non-contentious development applications from council business papers to enable more time to be spent on strategic planning, policy formulation and contentious development applications.
As the DCU meets weekly, this allows simpler and smaller-scale development applications to pass through without being held over until the next monthly ordinary meeting.
Matters are only deferred by the DCU in exceptional circumstances where there is a significant risk of a “sub-optimal” outcome that has significant consequences for the community. In this case, the matters will be looked at in a council meeting.
Council adopted the recommendation with the amendment that the DCU continue to operate with the mayor as chairperson until the policy is reviewed.