Page 921 - Week 03 - Wednesday, 22 March 2017
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Priority is determined based on the following factors: nominations likely to affect development and land release programs; nominations affected by impending development threats; nominations that will address the thematic gap in the register; nominations that can be considered in the context of related themes, as assessing related nominations is more efficient to more comprehensively and expediently consider and compare related values; and removing duplicate nominations or nominations that are afforded protection and development control under other legislation such as the Tree Protection Act, the Nature Conservation Act and the commonwealth’s environment and biodiversity protection act.
Additionally, other issues must be considered in determining priorities and staggering assessments and decisions, such as the risk of appeal and extensive consultation due to significant numbers of interested parties. These factors significantly divert resources and affect the Heritage Council’s ability to make headway on the nomination list.
Under the act, the Heritage Council must also manage any urgent nomination applications or other priorities that may arise outside the identified priority themes during the course of the year. Applications may also be made to cancel or amend an existing registration.
For urgent nomination applications, once the application is made and the fee paid, under the act the Heritage Council must, as far as practicable, make a decision within 30 days for an individual place and within 60 working days for a precinct. In some cases, nominations may be straightforward and can be easily and quickly assessed. In others, such as with precincts which may contain, for example, up to 300 individual dwellings, a single nomination may take many months, or even years, to assess due to the increased complexities involved and the high number of interested parties that need to be consulted.
Another factor in assessing nominations is that the quality of information provided in older nominations made prior to the introduction of the current act contain limited or no information about potential heritage significance. The old act allowed nominations of multiple individual places and precincts to be accepted without an indication of their potential heritage significance.
In fact, nominations generally fall into four distinct groups. A small proportion are by individuals. The other three groups are more or less split evenly, being nominations from the National Trust ACT, the Institute of Architects or the Heritage Council itself. Assessment of these older nominations requires extensive research to be undertaken by the Heritage Council in the absence of the original nomination application providing this information.
Under the current act, a much higher level of information and an assessment against heritage significance criteria is required for a nomination application to be accepted by the Heritage Council. If the required level of information is not provided with a nomination application made under the current act, the Heritage Council has the provision to dismiss the application.
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