RELIEF is coming, and probably before Christmas, the former New Lambton residents evacuated after the largest residential landslip in Australian history are being told.
Discussions between City of Newcastle and the NSW Reconstruction Authority executives this week focused on three aspects of compensation for affected property owners.
The first was a financial package to compensate affected residents for their land that cannot be developed. The second was financial compensation from the state and federal governments for the demolition of those properties.
The third element of those discussions was compensation for the works that will be required probably over a two-year period to stabilise the land.
City of Newcastle chief executive Jeremy Bath said the discussions were confidential, but that they were continuing in a "positive, collaborative way".
"I would expect that we would have a very positive outcome or resolution even by Christmas time 2026 for the residents, and we are prioritising those discussions in terms of residents first," Mr Bath said.
"We understand that what first needs to happen is that residents need to be compensated, then we will focus on council leading a project to demolish all of the affected properties, of which there are 19."
The last piece of work would be a project to stabilise the land, he said, but the entities had agreed on costs.
"We have agreed on a lot of things," Mr Bath said.
"There are still a few things, to be honest, that we haven't agreed on but we're working through that at an officer level ... and we remain really confident of an outcome by Christmas time this year."
Mr Bath's update followed his meeting with the authority on Monday. It was shared with councillors during a briefing session to the council on Tuesday night about plans to introduce a new geotechnical planning landslide risk clause into the council's Local Environmental Plan (LEP), a legal document providing rules and guidelines to control the use of private and public land through zoning.
The council's executive manager of planning and development, Amy Ryan, who provided the briefing, said the clause would consist of a landslide risk map, identifying the affected land, to provide a long-term planning mechanism to try to ensure identified landslip risks would be appropriately considered before any future development.
The new clause would also "turn off" the State Environmental Planning Policy (Exempt and Complying Development Codes) 2008, known as the SEPP, to prevent exempt development occurring on those sites, Ms Ryan said.
In those cases, affected property owners would be required to make a formal development application for certain types of developments formerly considered exempt or complying developments, for which a development application was not otherwise, or formerly, required.
As well as the evacuated properties, a further 16 properties would be included in the map as also carrying 'minor risks'. Those properties were identified in a Reconstruction Authority report released in February.
If the new clause was adopted into the LEP, the council could map other areas that may be prone to landslip, Ms Ryan said.
"We can map other areas that may be prone to landslip to ensure that that is publicly known, in terms of the information you need to submit for the DA, or if sites are not suitable for development, that that's also known," Ms Ryan said.
If those properties underwent suitable stabilisation works, the map could be updated, she said.
In terms of the code SEPP, it would limit what property owners in the affected area could do across "a whole range of works", but that was not uncommon across the Newcastle local government area that included areas with restrictions for other reasons, such as heritage considerations or flood zones.
"Given the constraints of the land, it needs to be fully assessed due to that geotechnical risk, so we are comfortable with that being a requirement on that land," Ms Ryan said.
Mr Bath said the council would continue to take a "cautionary approach" until there was something in writing from the state and federal governments.
"If we get that on the 24th of December, we can look in January at potentially making changes to the LEP, but until we have all of those residents fairly compensated we don't want to be doing anything ... or to create confusion, or create a gap, that makes things more difficult in terms of compensation," Mr Bath said.
