TRC moves to fix issue raised in court case

THE Toowoomba Regional Council has moved to amend a section of its infrastructure plan which made its now-completed legal dispute with Wagners “more complicated”.

In a move that coincidentally came a day after the Court of Appeals handed down a mixed judgment on the lengthy saga, councillors voted yesterday to start work on an interim amendment to the TRC’s Local Government Infrastructure Plan (LGIP).

The amendment would add natural urban waterways as trunk infrastructure on its LGIP mapping.

Infrastructure and environment principal Josie Raftery told councillors that legal advice recommended the inconsistency be fixed.

“(Advice said) while we do identify urban waterways such as Westbrook Creek as trunk infrastructure, we had not shown them on the map,” she said.

“That inconsistency had made that court case a lot more complicated and difficult than if we had been consistent in the first place.”

The amendment does not require ministerial approval, but the council will need to consult with the community prior to adopting it.

In the long-running legal dispute over levied infrastructure charges at Wellcamp Airport and Wellcamp Business Park, the Court of Appeals this week upheld parts of the original Planning and Environment Court decision in May 2019 that cleared Wagners of having to pay more than $20 million in stormwater charges.

But in a win for the council, appeals against the traffic trunk infrastructure charges were dismissed.