Public errors that have prolonged delays in the Northbourne Avenue public housing redevelopment have continued, with the planning directorate failing to display all relevant drawings online until two days before the scheduled close of public submissions.
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The omissions meant it appeared only 11 buildings were being preserved in the ACT government's demolition plans, not the 17 agreed after a provisional heritage listing by the Heritage Council ACT last month.
In a warning to anyone expecting demolition work to begin this year, the National Trust ACT has also flagged it is likely to appeal both a final registration of the council's limited protection decision and any development approval by the ACT Planning and Land Authority.
Trust spokesman Eric Martin said the government seemed to continue to make mistakes and change its position and should have fully considered the area's heritage significance before the development process.
"It's just amazing that their so-called haste to get it out keeps incurring errors which adds confusion to everybody else that's trying to understand what's going on," he said.
The authority pulled the amended application from the Environment and Planning Directorate's website on Tuesday morning before it was re-uploaded later in the day with the correct drawings. The 15-day public notification period, scheduled to end October 8, has been extended to October 28.
A spokeswoman for the directorate said the authority became aware during the weekend of "a discrepancy" in the website notification for the amended application, with not all the amended drawings being made available.
"All members of the public who have already submitted representations will be advised," she said.
In August, the Supreme Court ordered the Heritage Council to reverse a broader partial protection listing – covering 40 per cent of the public buildings – because the trust had made a submission two days late. This was due to the cut-off date for the response period being wrongly advertised as ending on October 22 last year, when Heritage Act rules meant it should have been October 20.
Mr Martin outlined several inconsistencies between the amended application and the latest heritage listing in a statement to the directorate on Friday, including the demolition of the Karuah Street maisonettes and all the Garden Flats, and that the gross floor area listed and the area to be demolished were the same.
He said the council should decide on heritage significance without any consideration for the potential development of the area.
"We've made a submission to the Heritage Council. If those issues are not adequately addressed within their final decision, and if they don't give us a satisfactory result, we have no other option, in my opinion, but to appeal that decision."
Heritage Council ACT chairman David Flannery said on Friday a final registration of the 17 public housing buildings from the Northbourne Avenue area, developed in the early 1960s, was expected to occur at the council's meeting in November or February.
Chief Minister Andrew Barr had wanted to protect only two buildings, the Northbourne Towers, but changed his position last month after the Heritage Council adopted a more modest protection position.
Mr Flannery said the amended application aligned with the provisional heritage registration and retained a representative sample of the Northbourne housing area. Drawings with the full 17 buildings marked as preserved had been part of the government's development application submission seen by the council, he said.
It has not been revealed what the protection of the extra buildings could cost the government in lost land sales, with Land Development Agency deputy chief executive Ben Ponton saying the yield would be determined on a site-by-site basis.
