Jeffrey Robert Barrett bought a property in Wyndham Vale, in Melbourne's west, in 1981, when it was zoned for rural use. Decades later, planning changes placed public acquisition overlays across that property and an adjoining one he owned, reserving parts of the land for a future transport corridor and an environmental grassland reserve. After the local council refused a development application because of the overlays, Barrett pursued compensation through the courts, a case that culminated in a Victorian Supreme Court judgment. Here's how the dispute unfolded, and how the compensation figure was reached. Because a public acquisition overlay can restrict what an owner does with land long before any government actually buys it, the case shows how owners may end up holding property they can neither develop nor sell at full value while they wait for compensation.
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