Seven decisions you can still influence on the Mid North Coast, and all of them close this month
Almost everything written about a council is about something it has already done. These are the ones it has not. As at 4 August, Coffs Harbour and Port Macquarie-Hastings have seven consultations open, closing between 12 and 28 August. Between them they cover a development control plan amendment, a rezoning at Emerald Beach, a renewable energy plan, and what the councils build and maintain for halls, public toilets and sports fields. Kempsey has none open.
What is open
| Council | What it decides | Closes |
|---|---|---|
| Coffs Harbour | Development Control Plan 2015, Amendment No. 47 Changes to the rules that sit under the planning instrument and govern how development is actually assessed. | Wed 12 August |
| Coffs Harbour | Road naming proposals New or changed road names. | Fri 14 August |
| Port Macquarie-Hastings | Community Spaces Plan (public toilets, halls and sports field amenities) What council builds and maintains for halls, public toilets and sports amenities. | Mon 17 August |
| Port Macquarie-Hastings | Places to Play Plan (sporting field facilities) Priorities for sports fields: lighting, surfaces, drainage, parking, shade, seating, accessibility. | Mon 17 August |
| Port Macquarie-Hastings | Draft Social Strategy and Activation Plan 2026 The strategy shaping community services and public-place programming. | Wed 19 August |
| Coffs Harbour | Draft Renewable Energy and Emissions Reduction Plan The city's own energy and emissions targets and how it intends to meet them. | Mon 24 August |
| Coffs Harbour | Planning proposal, 82 Smiths Road, Emerald Beach A site-specific rezoning proposal. | Fri 28 August |
Which of these actually matters
Not equally, and it is worth saying which.
The development control plan amendment is the sleeper. A DCP is the layer beneath the planning instrument: it does not decide what is permissible, it decides how an application gets assessed once it is. Setbacks, car parking, landscaping, building form. It is the document that most often determines whether the thing built next door looks the way you expected. Amendment No. 47 closed first, on 12 August 2026, and DCP amendments attract the fewest submissions of anything on this list.
The Emerald Beach planning proposal is the most concentrated. A site-specific rezoning affects one parcel and the people near it more than anyone else, which is exactly the shape of consultation where a small number of informed submissions carries real weight. It also closes last, on 28 August.
The two Port Macquarie-Hastings facility plans are the most winnable. Asked what you want from a sports field, the council lists lighting, surfaces, drainage, parking, shade, seating and accessibility. Those are the sort of specific, comparable preferences a plan can actually act on, unlike a general statement of support. The same is true of the halls and public toilets plan.
The renewable energy plan and the social strategy are broader documents where an individual submission is one voice among many, though both set direction that later budgets are measured against.
Why you probably have not seen these
Each council runs its own engagement platform, and they are not linked to each other or indexed together anywhere. Coffs Harbour uses one address, Port Macquarie-Hastings another, and Kempsey’s is branded after the river valley rather than the council, at Your Say Macleay, so searching for the council’s name does not find it. Two of the three return almost no readable text without a browser, which is why automated aggregators and search engines tend not to surface them well either.
Kempsey’s platform currently lists active projects, including Hat Head Holiday Park and a Kempsey Development Control Plan update, but none of them is showing an open submission period. Its most recent project was published on 6 July.
Our view, labelled as such. There is nothing wrong with how these councils are consulting. The deadlines are published, the projects are described in plain language, and Coffs Harbour has gone further than most by stating that submissions on projects and developments will now be published to support transparency and trust.
The gap is aggregation, and it is the ordinary consequence of three councils each running a separate platform. A resident who wants to know what they can still influence has to know that three sites exist, know that one of them is named after a river, and check all three. We intend to publish this list monthly so that they do not have to.
How we checked this
On 4 August 2026 we read all three engagement platforms directly: Coffs Harbour’s and Kempsey’s in a browser, because both return only a few hundred characters of visible text to an ordinary fetch, and Port Macquarie-Hastings’ by fetch, because it is server-rendered. Every project title and closing date above is transcribed from those pages.
One thing we checked rather than assumed: Port Macquarie-Hastings’ page appeared, on a plain fetch, to say there were no projects open for comment while listing three. Loaded in a browser the same section lists all three. The earlier reading was an un-hydrated page, not a fault on the council’s site, and we mention it only because we nearly reported it as one.
What we have not done. We have not read the underlying documents for any of the seven, so the descriptions are of what each consultation covers, not of what it proposes; anyone intending to make a submission should read the document rather than this summary. We looked for a Nambucca Valley engagement platform at the usual address patterns and did not find one, which does not prove there is none. Closing dates are as published and councils sometimes extend them.
Sources
- City of Coffs Harbour, Have Your Say (read in a browser, 4 August 2026): the four open projects and their closing dates, and the statement that submissions on projects and developments will now be published.
- Port Macquarie-Hastings Council, Have Your Say (read 4 August 2026): the three open projects, their descriptions and closing dates.
- Kempsey Shire Council, Your Say Macleay (read in a browser, 4 August 2026): the active project list, none of which shows an open submission period, and the 6 July 2026 date of the most recent.
Running a consultation we have missed, or one that has been extended? Tell us and we will check it and update this list.