Major fee hikes proposed for Victoria’s main administrative and dispute-resolution tribunal – the Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal (‘the Tribunal’) – will significantly disadvantage ‘Mum and Dad’ objectors and community group applicants over big developers, corporations and government agencies.
Objectors in most planning disputes will be hit by fee increases from $322 to over $1000 just to get their matter listed. Then hearing fees of between around $370 and $1800 a day could be charged on top of that.
Fee increases would rise under the proposal by an average of 56% and up to more than 2500% in the maximum case.
The rationale for the increases is to make the Tribunal more ‘user pays’ and to charge fees similar to the courts.
The paper outlines the proposed fee regulations and the main areas of concern arising from them.
View briefing paper Major increases to VCAT fees proposed (PDF, 73KB)
Now available – submission to the Department of Justice:
View Submission in response to Proposed VCAT (Fees) Regulations 2013 (PDF, 275KB)