The Division of  Resources and Energy (DRE), part of the Department of Industry, Resources and Energy in New South Wales, is currently reviewing its Guidelines for Community Consultation Requirements for Exploration and the associated community consultation reporting information.

One of the conditions on titles is that title holders must undertake community consultation according to the guidelines set out by the DRE.

A draft of the new Exploration Code of Practice: Community Consultation is now available for public comment.

The draft Code:

• requires community consultation to be adequate, inclusive and appropriate, and be undertaken in an open and accountable way
  provides detailed requirements relating to the development of a community consultation strategy
• requires the type and scale of consultation to correspond with the activity impact level (an assessment tool is provided to determine the impact level)
• incorporates detailed guidelines on the minimum requirements for the Annual Community Consultation Report (these are also supported by Community Consultation Plan provisions which outline the content of a plan, and its benefit in informing the annual reporting requirements).

The draft Code will apply to all titles (coal, minerals and petroleum) issued after the publication of the Code, through an amended condition of title.  The community consultation conditions on minerals titles will be amended to be consistent with those for coal and petroleum.

The public are invited to submit their feedback on the draft Exploration Code of Practice: Community Consultation.  Information on how to lodge submissions is available from the DRE web site.  Submissions received before the 30 November, 2015 will be considered in the finalisation of the draft Code.