Agent Alert! Draft Sutherland Shire Local Environmental Plan Update

We have been hearing on the grapevine that the Draft 2013 Local Environment Plan (LEP) will be released and gazetted by the NSW State Government shortly. Once the Draft LEP has been gazetted, it will no longer be a Draft LEP and will be the LEP for the Sutherland Shire.

Once this occurs, the Section 149 Certificates that everyone has ordered prior to that date, will be out of date.

We have made enquiries of Sutherland Shire Council and they have advised that it could take as long as two weeks after the gazettal of the LEP for updated Section 149 Certificates to be processed and issued by them.

In some cases, what is currently in a Section 149 Certificate and what should be in a Section 149 Certificate after the Draft LEP is gazetted, will change.

The worst-case scenario will be that fresh Section 149 Certificates cannot be obtained after the gazettal of the Draft LEP for a period of two weeks.

If an exchange did occur during this period and the information contained within the Section 149 Certificate was not up to date at the time of exchange, it could give a right to the purchaser to rescind the contract even after the expiry of the cooling off period, or even if exchanged with a Section 66w Certificate.

We will have a specific special condition in our contracts to ensure that this is not the case to protect our vendor clients and ensure that any exchange of contracts will be legally binding. For further information, please contact our Conveyancing Team.