De-risking environmental and planning decisions: getting the process right

Key Points:

Whether you are an applicant, an assessing officer or the decision-maker, there are steps you can take to protect environmental and planning decisions from a successful legal challenge.

Administrative decisions on environmental or planning approvals are under increasing scrutiny, and errors in the decision-making process can derail a project, as was recently shown by the consent order of the Federal Court in the Carmichael Mine case. What can applicants, assessing officers and decision-makers do to avoid these errors, and reduce the risks of a successful legal challenge, increased costs and delay?

Challenging environmental and planning decisions via judicial review