Under item 18 in the current Local Law, an authorised officer may issue an infringement notice for an offence. The infringement notice will include a penalty for the offence.

Penalties are fixed and allocated in penalty units. You can find these outlined in Schedule 2 of the Local Law. The table identifies each clause and the penalty units which may be applied if an Infringement Notice is issued and can be found here.

Noting that the penalty for an infringement notice for offences under clauses 16 and 27 of this local law is fixed at 10 penalty units.

Each penalty unit is worth $100.

When a breach is detected an authorised officer may issue a Notice to Comply directing the property owner or occupier to rectify the matter.

If the Notice to Comply has not been complied with an authorised officer may:

• Issue an infringement notice on the person or persons responsible for the behaviour; and,
• have all necessary works undertaken as detailed in the Notice to Comply with all costs including administration, being the responsibility of the person or persons responsible.

Any person issued with an infringement notice:

• May pay the penalty indicated to the council within 42 days of the notice being issued; or,

• Is entitled to not pay the penalty indicated in the notice and instead defend the prosecution in court.

1. Currently, the individual penalty is the same as a corporation penalty.
2. Penalties have remained unchanged for more than 10 years.

1. Increase the penalty for a corporation or entity to $500 instead of remaining the same as an individual.
2. Increase the penalties from 1 penalty unit ($100) to 2 penalty units ($200) for a natural person (individuals) to be more in line with the standard penalty unit under the Monetary Units Act 2004.
   Alternative is that penalty unit increases annually in line with the annual CPI increase under the Monetary Units Act 2014. Currently 1 penalty unit is $192