Council wins appeal, but must find funds
After 10 years of planning and court action in 2024, Newport Surf Life Saving Club has been given the green light to refurbish.
As the building owner, council had applied to the Sydney North Planning Panel in 2022 to install a sea wall, demolish part of the club and build a new wing. The panel rejected this on the basis of future erosion risk. Council’s appeal of the decision was upheld by the Land and Environment Court on 18 December 2024, with the panel also agreeing sufficient coastal protection works were in place.
This will include a 100-metre buried concrete wall, and as part of the approval, council must inspect, document and cover costs to restore any damage to the beach or coastal protection works caused by a coastal storm. In its original submission, council explained that if the wall became exposed, the structure was designed to maintain public access with a series of stairs and a ramp.
Newport SLSC president Guyren Smith told PL the club was ‘stoked’ with the decision.
“We are living out of containers in the carpark. It’s terrible,” Mr Smith said. “We’ve been putting up with facilities which are a long way behind those of our neighbouring clubs.
“We wanted to retain the historical nature of the clubhouse building while also getting it to a point where it’s functional and safe for the members to work out of.”
The project, originally estimated at $7.3 million, will now cost closer to $8.5 million, he added. Funding sources are yet to be finalised by council.
The sea wall component of the development remains controversial. Brendan Donohoe, president of Surfrider Foundation Northern Beaches, told PL that the concrete sea wall will change the beach processes. “Saving the old club and sinking public money into a public beach to ruin a beach is ridiculous,” Mr Donohoe said.
“To put $4 million into a buried concrete wall that will damage the beach is an extraordinary decision. No one was suggesting we knock down the old club, but any development needed to be behind it.”
Council told PL it engaged independent experts for advice on the development, which included a coastal engineer, an ecologist, a planner, a structural engineer and a heritage expert.
The court accepted that the development would not unreasonably limit public access to or use of the beach, had been appropriately designed to address coastal matters and would not increase the risk of coastal hazards on the site, council said.