Hilltops Shire Councillors have rejected a permit for the temporary grazing of stock on roadsides that would have required stock owners to ‘hotwire’ grazing areas and pick up excrement from the road pavement.
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The permit was presented to councillors by staff at this month’s council meeting following concerns that Local Land Services was “rubber stamping” stock grazing permits and council needed more control to ensure local roads were protected and safety issues were addressed..
Following much debate about unnecessarily creating extra paper work, re-inventing the wheel and putting extra work on staff the Council voted to ask Local Land Services (LLS) to inform it when it receives a request to graze stock on roads in Hilltops.
Councillors were presented with a permit staff had developed following consultation with six other councils which included a condition that when “moving stock to the opposite side of the public road across the road pavement surface, it is a requirement to remove any excrement deposited by the stock from the road pavement”.
The suggested permit also required that grazing areas should be “hotwired off to prohibit stock wondering on to the road carriageway”.
Councillors were told staff had looked at what other councils are doing.
“In the past LLS has given blanket approval for permits without assessment of the conditions, in terms of the road, biodiversity issues or traffic safety issues,” councillors were told.
“It’s been basically left to (LSS) to do a rubber stamping exercise and this is one of the reasons it has been brought to our attention.
“We’ve found roads grazed without any real regard to signage and public liability insurance.”
Council eventually voted to continue to delegate Local Land Services to issue permits for the grazing of stock on Hilltops roads with particular attention to the display of signs and to refer to Hilltops requests for grazing on any of the highway networks for discussion on any environmental sensitive areas and also for control of stock within high speed environments.
Council will also ask for a certificate of currency and a copy of the permit be forwarded to it when it is issued.
“In my past we’ve required the drovers to keep the stock off the road, but the practice that I’m observing here is that they allow the stock to wander straight up the middle of the road,” general manager David Aber told the meeting.
“We need to be advised first that LLS have a request to issue a permit on our roads and apply any conditions we need to apply to that permit,” Mr Aber said.
