Recently, the Huon Valley Council requested that election candidate Mr Peter George’s team remove a campaign billboard from the Huon Highway at Castle Forbes Bay.
At the time, council officers, acting in good faith investigated the sign in response to public complaints and found the signage did not comply with exemption provisions for electoral signage under the Statewide Tasmanian Planning Scheme. Mr George’s team, and subsequently the billboard property owner, was asked to remove the sign.
An internal review of this compliance action was undertaken today which found Tasmanian State Planning Office guidance stating that billboards with existing planning approval are not required to meet the new electoral signage provisions. As a result, our request for removal was made in error.
I contacted Mr George and his team immediately to explain the circumstances and offered my sincere apologies. I can confirm that the billboard will be reinstated today.
I want to assure the community that the removal of the sign was not a politically motivated action. Our officers acted in good faith and based on the information available to them at the time to comply with the Statewide Tasmanian Planning Scheme.
I acknowledge this mistake, and in line with our values of integrity and continuous improvement, we will implement internal process changes to ensure similar errors do not occur in future.
As CEO, I extend a public apology to Mr George for any inconvenience this has caused.
Lachlan Kranz, CEO Huon Valley Council