If you're not sure about what community engagement you should do before you apply, we can advise you. We highly recommend this for complex applications – such as development licences. Visit Get help finding the right permission.
You must get a permission to conduct activities that have risk of harm to human health and the environment.
We make permission decisions under the Environment Protection Act 2017 and Environment Protection Regulations 2021.
You should engage with anyone who may be impacted by your proposed activity – for example, a neighbouring resident or business. You need to do this before submitting your application.
Engagement is a requirement for some permission types – such as development licences and development licence exemptions. For more detail about the engagement requirements for each permission type, see our Charter of consultation.
Information about your community engagement helps us to consider:
- human rights under the Charter of Human Rights and Responsibilities Act 2006(opens in a new window)
- the principles of environment protection
- if anyone else's interests are affected by the proposal
- if your application is consistent with the Environment Protection Act and Environment Protection Regulations 2021 and will not result in an unacceptable risk to human health or environment.
Our Regulatory communications and engagement policy provides more detail about how we communicate and work with people under the Act.
Applications that require community engagement
You must engage with the community before you apply for relevant permissions. These permissions include:
- authorisations to discharge or dispose of waste in an emergency or for public hardship
- authorisations to commission, repair, decommission or dismantle an industrial plant or equipment
- development licences
- development licence exemptions.
We also encourage engagement for other permission types. We may ask you to conduct engagement, or we may conduct our own engagement as part of our assessment.
If you do not conduct this engagement, we may not accept your application or may take longer to assess it.
If you do not conduct engagement or do not believe it's necessary, you must justify this in your application with supporting evidence.
Community engagement information required
Our Charter of consultation outlines our general approach to engagement.
Our Development licence application guidance has more detail about the specific engagement requirements for development licences.
Your application should include the following details:
Who you engaged
Explain who you engaged with about the proposed activity – for example:
- community members
- stakeholders
- community groups
- Traditional Owners
- registered Aboriginal parties.
A stakeholder is someone personally or professionally invested in outcomes from our activities. Stakeholders may be from community, business, industry and government sectors.
Our Charter of consultation has more information about engaging with Traditional Owners.
How you conducted the engagement
Explain how you conducted the engagement, including:
- the potential issues, concerns and risks that were raised
- how you addressed and responded to the raised issues, concerns and risks
- how your approach to engagement used best practice and inclusive techniques.
You need to provide evidence of what engagement you conducted and what you did to respond to any issues that were raised.
Provide a stakeholder register with:
- engagement method
- engagement date
- participant names (must comply with Privacy and Data Protection Act 2014)
- stakeholders' issues and concerns.
Provide any engagement templates, materials and supporting information.
Guidance
The International Association for Public Participation Australasia has guidance and engagement resources(opens in a new window) on their website. These resources can help you plan your engagement.
You can also get an engagement professional to guide you through the process. This may be helpful depending on the scale of engagement you need to do. We recommend this for development licences that may have a high level of community interest and concern.
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