Most council consultations ask what you want built. This one asks what you want policed, which is rarer and arguably more useful, because it is the council telling you in advance where its compliance officers will be spending their attention.
The draft statement sets out five priorities a year for three years. Council says the
list was informed by community feedback from the 2024/25 engagement program
combined
with its own data and experience, and that the priority areas
will receive increased oversight, and an increased regulatory response may be applied
.
The fifteen, year by year
| 2026-27 | 2027-28 | 2028-29 |
|---|---|---|
| Unhealthy land and abandoned dwellings | Smoke and air pollution | Illegal camping |
| Dogs in prohibited areas | School zone parking compliance and proactive education | Development consent and complying development certificate compliance |
| Gosford CBD parking | Unauthorised coastal works | Illegal dumping |
| Unauthorised works on private property | High risk food and public health premises | Food truck and stall compliance |
| Outdoor dining compliance | Abandoned vehicles | Erosion and sediment control |
The distinction that decides what this list actually means
Read quickly, the table says the council will not deal with illegal dumping until 2028.
That reading is wrong, and the statement says so itself. The yearly priorities
exist in addition to our enduring priorities
, which council describes as
the regulatory functions we are committed to upholding on an ongoing basis
.
Those enduring priorities are parking accessibility, community safety including dog attacks and leashing and registration, non-compliance with lawful directions and orders, protecting public assets and the environment, and illegal camping compliance.
Which produces the clearest proof of the point: illegal camping appears in both lists. It is an enduring priority now and a yearly priority in 2028-29. Being named for a year does not mean enforcement starts then. It means that year gets the extra attention.
What is worth saying in a submission
The useful question is not whether these are real problems. All fifteen plainly are. It is whether the sequence is right, because the sequence is the only thing the yearly list actually decides, and it is the thing a submission can move.
Two orderings stand out to us. Unauthorised coastal works sits in 2027-28, on a coastline where seawall applications at Wamberal are live now and the council’s Open Coast Coastal Management Program was certified in June 2026. And erosion and sediment control, which is the everyday building-site version of the same problem, sits in the last year of three.
That is an observation about ordering, not a criticism of anyone’s conduct. Both matters are already covered by the enduring priority of protecting public assets and the environment, and a council has finite officers and has to sequence something last. But if you think the Coast’s erosion exposure argues for moving either forward, this consultation is the mechanism that exists for saying so, and it is open for another two and a half weeks.
Equally, if you run a business the list is worth reading as a diary. Outdoor dining compliance and Gosford CBD parking are this year. High risk food and public health premises and food truck and stall compliance are in the two years after. A cafe with footpath seating and a permit it has not checked recently now knows when to check it.
How to have a say
Submissions can be made through the online form on the council’s Your Voice Our Coast
exhibition page, by email, or by post to PO Box 20, Wyong NSW 2259. The page also carries the
draft statement itself and a set of FAQs. Submissions close Friday 21 August 2026.
One thing worth knowing before you write: council’s privacy notice on that page says
feedback may also be de-identified and published in reports
, and that anonymous
feedback means it cannot come back to you with questions.
Methodology
Every priority listed above is transcribed from Central Coast Council's own draft Regulatory Priorities Statement 2026-29 exhibition page and its accompanying announcement, both read on 4 August 2026. The quoted phrases are the council's words. We have grouped the fifteen into a table by year exactly as the council lists them; the wording of each entry is the council's, lightly normalised for sentence case.
What we have not done. We have not read the full draft statement PDF behind the exhibition page, so this reports the priorities and the framing council published on the page itself, not the detail of any enforcement approach. We have not seen how the 2024/25 engagement feedback fed into the ranking, because that working is not published. The observation about the ordering of coastal works and erosion controls is ours and is offered as a question for submissions, not as a finding about the council's conduct or any individual's. Nothing here is legal advice about any specific property, permit or notice. This is a draft on exhibition, so the final statement may differ.
Run a business on the Coast, or read these priorities differently? Ask for a correction. Corrections are published, dated and left visible.