The ACT government is considering tougher town planning regulations that would require Canberra home owners to keep their blocks neat and tidy after its latest attempt to resolve a 40-year-old home extension saga that has cost ACT taxpayers more than $100,000 ended in defeat.
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
$0/
(min cost $0)
or signup to continue reading
Paul and Monica Gerondal, who are now elderly, in poor health and bankrupt, were originally granted approval to build an extension to their Yambina Crescent, Waramanga, home in 1975.
The work was not completed by 1983 when the permit expired and a succession of ACT government departments and agencies have been attempting, ever since, to have the site rendered safe and the block, which has accumulated a substantial quantity of building and other materials and is now overgrown, cleaned up.
These efforts culminated in a notice terminating their land lease on December 19, 2013.
The Gerondals, who are still resident at the property, appealed the notice to ACAT on January 7, 2014.
ACAT overruled the termination, on what an Environment and Sustainable Development Directorate spokeswoman described as "a technical legal issue", on August 1 last year.
"In relation to the Gerondals' case, the government is considering statutory reforms to address the technical legal issue identified by the tribunal regarding the standing of orders made under laws prior to the [passage of] the Planning and Development Act 2007," the spokeswoman said.
"More fundamentally the Minister [Planning Minister, Mick Gentleman] has asked the directorate to look at the opportunity to introduce a municipal style regulatory framework that would enable issues such as the state of undeveloped blocks to be dealt with expeditiously.
"This could, for example, include a requirement to keep blocks tidy pending development. Suitable penalties would attach to any failure to comply with these requirements."
The ACAT decision, which ran to 51 pages and considered voluminous amounts of documentary evidence dating back four decades, found that the ACT government's bid to terminate the Gerondals' lease did not breach their human right to "not have ... his or her home interfered [with] unlawfully or arbitrarily".
"Before the decision to terminate [a lease] is made, the lessee is to be provided with a notice, is to have the opportunity to make submissions as to why the discretion to terminate should not be exercised and the lessee may appeal to the tribunal. In the tribunal's view, this is not an arbitrary process."
ACAT also found the couple's bankruptcy was readily reversible should one or more of their properties be sold and that the termination of their lease would not leave them homeless.
The principal objection to allowing the lease termination to proceed was that legislation making it possible had not been passed 40 years ago when this matter first began.
"[While] the tribunal accepts that the respondent is authorised to take compliance action ... the tribunal finds that the authorised action does not extend to action which was not available at the time the Administrative Appeals Tribunal activity order was made and rectification notice was issued."
Paul Gerondal declined to comment on the ruling but confirmed he and Mrs Gerondal were still in residence at the home.
