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Wyong Timber Business Operates Without Consent

Wyong mayor Doug Eaton’s family company has run a Mannering Park timber business for nearly a decade either without council consent, or without complying with a court-ordered approval condition linked to a road with a history of fatal crashes. Source: Newcastle Herald

Now questions are being asked about why Eaton & Sons has not completed access works from Ruttleys Road to its timber manufacturing business and storage facility.

This is despite a March 2010 council approval requiring it, and a 2006 NSW Land and Environment Court decision requiring the access works within six months of the council approval.

Questions are also being asked about why the council is yet to determine the most recent Eaton & Sons application, lodged in 2012, to modify the access works that could include moving power poles, after the company wrote to council about the “prohibitive expense”.

This is despite many reports to council about inadequate sight distance from the existing access on a bend in Ruttleys Road, the number of heavy vehicles using the road and the site, and a warning in a report in December 2011 about the 49 crashes that had occurred on Ruttleys Road between January 2006 and August 2011, including three crashes in which four people died.

The report by the council’s environment and planning services director Gina Vereker said two of the crashes, in 2007 and 2011, were adjacent to the Eaton & Sons gravel access, “further reinforcing the necessity to relocate the current access and provide the appropriate treatment”.

The report was written after Eaton & Sons lodged a modification to a modified access works plan that was approved only two months earlier, seeking to defer permanent works for 18 months and use an interim measure not supported by evidence that would allow council to make a decision, councillors were told.

“In the meantime it is considered unlikely that the applicant will take any action towards implementing the current consent conditions,’’ Ms Vereker said in her report.

“Therefore, the present unsatisfactory road and intersection conditions in Ruttleys Rd will continue.”

Mannering Park precinct committee president Andrew Whitbourne said his group had been frustrated for a number of years while asking questions of council about the business and the access works, and not receiving answers.

“We’re just disappointed and disgusted, really, because there appears to have been no substantial action by the council to get the work done, and a lack of regard for the safety of the more than 8000 motorists who use Ruttleys Road every day,” Mr Whitbourne said.

But broader questions are being asked about the council, its operations and priorities, after controversial decisions about a regional airport, Chinese theme park, the appointment of the former chief executive of a property group as council planning director only months after council paid the property group $17 million for significant land holdings, and the reclassification of community land to operational land for sale or lease.

“There are considerable concerns about many of the happenings with Wyong Council, but complaints to government ministers and departments seem to fall on deaf ears,” said Central Coast Community Environment Network chairman John Asquith.

Wyong resident and Australian Coal Alliance spokesman Alan Hayes described the council’s handling of the Ruttleys Road issue as “just the tip of the iceberg”.

“There’s a lot of other developments that do not seem appropriate, and certainly the NSW government is aware of community concerns. I think we have reached the point where there needs to be a full investigation of Wyong Council by the Office of Local Government,” Mr Hayes said.

Mr Eaton is Wyong Council’s longest-serving councillor, was first elected in 1991, and is in his fourth term as mayor after stints in 1996-97, 2010-11 and 2012-13. He has degrees in commerce and law.

He was a director of Eaton & Sons from 1981 until June 20 last year when he resigned only weeks after Eaton & Sons opened a hardware store within the Big Flower nursery at Ourimbah without council consent.

The matter is yet to be determined by the council. In an email in response to Herald questions, Mr Eaton said Eaton & Sons bought the power station land in 2004 and advised the council in writing that it did not believe it needed a fresh development application because Vales Point power station had used the site for storage and assembly “and that range of uses would continue”.

“Some two years later due to political pressure there was court action that was settled,” Mr Eaton wrote this week.

“The consent orders have been complied with and the driveway/road has been improved. A development application was eventually approved and has been complied with, subject to the caveat as to its need.”

Mr Eaton said the driveway was built by or for the state government and had been in use since 1960 “and there is no accident history”.

He said delays were related to works associated with a nearby mine entry.

“In my opinion the real story in these matters is how local politics has prejudiced the legal operations of a reputable local business employing some 40 odd locals in an area that is desperate for local jobs,” he wrote.

A Wyong Council spokeswoman said it was council policy not to pursue compliance issues while consent modification applications were before council.