As he walked from Tuesday night’s Shoalhaven City Council meeting where only a small number of the local environment plan issues had been discussed, Mr Clark said, “I don’t know why we have a special development committee [a group formed specially to consider submissions to the draft LEP].

“My staff put hours into writing reports but half the councillors don’t turn up, and half the ones who do don’t read the reports.

“Then it gets to council and lots of things get overturned,” Mr Clark said as he walked from the council chambers.

Earlier in the evening councillors spent several hours going through recommendations from the special development committee meetings, and overturning several despite warnings from staff the suggested changes would further delay the process because they would be blocked by the state government.

Many were spot rezonings, raising the ire of Cr John Fergusson, who said many people were using the LEP as an opportunity to obtain a benefit through rezoning and subdivisions done without any strategic consideration.

SLEP Review Committee member Keith Learn said in the process council breached several guidelines it had set out when calling for submissions to the draft LEP.

A fact sheet attached to the draft LEP said, “It is likely that some landowners will want to seek rezoning of their land as part of the draft Shoalhaven local environment plan 2009 to allow for a different type or range of permissible land uses.”

However the fact sheet said, “Due to the best-fit approach to preparing the draft Shoalhaven LEP 2009 and the timeframes the state government has given to complete the draft LEP, there is little opportunity available for rezoning to be included as a result of submissions made during the exhibition period.

“Rezoning requests should be justified and not speculative,” the sheet explained.

Mr Learn claimed many of the rezoning requests being considered and even approved by council were “purely speculative” and some had even been previously refused “as they could not be substantiated under standard scrutiny”.

“This backdoor approach to development will result in circumvention of state laws, council’s policies, council departments’ perusal, government agencies’ input, community consultative input and neighbour and community notification requesting comment,” Mr Learn added.

Mr Clark yesterday expressed concern about the potential for spot rezoning to further delay what had been a lengthy process to draw up and consider the draft LEP.

“Unless changes are soundly based we will have difficulty justifying them as we go forward, and it will cause delays,” he said.

Several examples of changes that would be difficult to justify emerged during Tuesday night’s meeting.

As councillors suggested reducing a transport corridor and rezoning land for residential development, Mr Clark argued, “If you’re going to start taking chunks out of the corridor the validity of your planning process is starting to disappear.”

In another discussion councillors voted to change regulations for an area of prime agricultural land, reducing the minimum lot size from 40 hectares to 10 hectares.

Cr Amanda Findley said that would lead to land use conflicts, and a big win for lawyers, because some people would buy the smaller allotments as lifestyle blocks while others would want to have intensive agriculture.

She said several changes may seem fine, but suggestions and requests needed to be considered as part of an overall strategy for the future of the region, and deciding where the best locations were for smaller lot subdivisions.

“Just because somebody thinks it’s a good idea doesn’t mean it’s right for the future of this city,” she said.