Our local laws enable us to maintain a thriving municipality by ensuring everyone enjoys a safe and vibrant environment. They guide our actions on managing unsightly properties, community safety, amenity concerns, outdoor dining, building/construction, and more. These laws prevent individual actions from negatively impacting our shared community.

To keep pace with evolving community needs and legislation, we are seeking your feedback. This new Local Law will replace the previous one, reflecting emerging issues and strengthening our ability to protect public spaces.

Ultimately, these laws empower us to uphold community health, safety, and amenity by setting clear guidelines for public and private behaviour, with appropriate consequences for non-compliance.

The Local Law's main objectives are summarised as follows:

• Protecting public health & safety
• Maintaining and enhancing community amenity
• Regulating the use of public space and Council assets
• Provisions for keeping of certain animals
• Ensuring compliance with the relevant legislation

Once adopted, the Local Law can remain in place for up to 10 years. During this time, it’s important that the Law stays relevant, so we aim to future-proof it to ensure it continues to meet the needs of our community and respond to emerging issues

It will help us identify which parts of the current Local Law are confusing and guide the use of clearer, more accessible language in the new draft.

Your input will also influence the content of the draft—what’s included, how it’s worded, and how it impacts the amenity of our residents, businesses, and visitors.

Specifically, your feedback will help us:

• Identify key issues or ‘hot topics’ to address in the new Local Law
• Find the right balance between the needs of residents, businesses, and visitors
• Ensure the Local Law reflects our local context and effectively responds to community concerns

While we value your input, there are some aspects of the new draft Local Law that are non-negotiable.

These include:

• The requirement to have a Local Law – this is a legislative obligation.
• Clauses related to safety – these are essential for protecting the amenity of residents, businesses, and visitors.
• Legal constraints – some elements are mandated by legislation or regulatory frameworks and cannot be altered.
• Standard management requirements – certain standards must be in place to ensure effective and consistent regulation.
• Permit requirements – some permits are necessary to ensure Council retains appropriate regulatory authority.

The Local Law is designed to prevent misbehaviour within the community. When notified a by-law has been breached, Council will undertake an investigation. If found proven, enforcement action may include a direction, warning, notice, or penalty (a fine).

Potentially yes. However, any changes cannot be applied retrospectively. For example, if Council agreed to reduce the number of pets living in a single household, this would only apply to new registrations not existing household pets.

No, our Local Law does not include rules that are already addressed in other jurisdictions, such as State and Federal legislation.

The closing date for feedback on ideas to improve the current Local Law is 5pm Friday 1st August 2025.

Following the consultation period, we will review all feedback and, where appropriate, we will use it to inform our draft Local Law. The draft Local Law document will be presented to Council and will then be available to the community for further consultation.

The DAMP is a four-year strategy that sets out how Council manages dogs and cats under the Domestic Animals Act 1994. It promotes safety, responsible pet ownership, and animal welfare.

Council is legally required to review both Local Law No. 2 and the DAMP. This ensures they stay relevant, effective and aligned with community expectations.

DAMP: Only applies to dogs and cats under state legislation.

Local Law No. 2: Covers a broader range of community amenity issues, including the keeping of livestock and poultry, and other local matters.

Your feedback will directly shape the draft plans. We’ll share what we heard and how we used it before the documents go to Council for final adoption.