Court ruling deals a heavy blow to Wakefield Park's future - Speedcafe

Wakefield Park Racecourse, in 2019

The court’s decision has jeopardized the future of Wakefield Park due to the imposition of strict noise limits in the future.

Commissioner Tim Horton has now handed down his verdict following the New South Wales Land and Environmental Court proceedings held in March, when circuit owner Benalla Auto Club (officially, the BAC subsidiary that owns the site, ‘BAC WMR Holdings Pty Ltd’ ) brought Goulburn local Mulwaree Council to court.

While construction work has been approved, the new noise limit effectively limits Wakefield Park to race meetings for 30 days per year, a situation previously stated by circuit management would render operations unenforceable.

Race meetings fall into the ‘Category Red’ event category, i.e. events with a noise level of 85 to 95 dB(A) LAeq 15 minutes (i.e. noise level in the frequency response of the human ear, averaged over a 15 minute period).

However, it should be noted that for development approval purposes, ‘events’ are actually “considered races or day races and not individual events or individual races on different tracks.”

That is, a two-day race meeting, for example, would be considered two ‘events’ for board regulatory purposes.

Annex A of the development agreement stipulates that, “For every Red category Event, there must be 11 Days of Rest.”

‘Days of Rest’ are defined as “days without motorsport activity”, whereas ‘motorsport activities’ are defined as “racing and recreational events and activities involving motorized vehicles including road-registered cars, racing cars, motorcycles and trucks, and not including maintenance and repair of facilities”.

Wakefield Park opened in 1994 and, until recently, was subject to the original 1993 building approval.

However, due to complaints about “offensive noise”, the board issued a provisional ‘Precautionary Notice’ in January 2019, then again in January 2020 following conciliation with circuit management, and another in July 2021, before quickly revoking the latter and returning to January. 2020 version.

The precautionary notice is only meant to be a temporary measure, with a new set of permanent noise limits to be issued upon approval of a recent development application.

Wakefield Park initially attempted to allow 75 Red Category days per year, then appeared to be seeking a 60-day compromise.

Further, it lowered what it looked for with respect to ‘Category Yellow’ days (75 to 85 dB(A) LAeq 15 minutes) from 212 to 170 days.

In particular, if he uses all 30 Red Category days allowed under the new development agreement (13 July 2022), he will not be able to use any Amber Category days, the maximum allowed is 40 per year. .

That’s because approval relies on a particular methodology of ‘event equivalent’ (per the Noise Guide for Local Government 2013 in New South Wales) based on how much the event category outweighs the background noise.

11 days of rest per Red Category Day is a multiplication ratio of 12, which means 30 Red days are 360 ​​days of equivalent events, leaving only five days remaining.

However, the day of the Amber Category event requires eight days of rest, and therefore none is allowed.

Wakefield Park previously hosted the Dunlop Super2 Series, including the final round of the stand-alone competition (i.e. not on the Repco Supercars Championship endorsement bill), in 2008.

His current highest profile event is the Australian Superbike Championship.

Noise limits Wakefield Park must adhere to, going forward

The methodology on which approval rests (note that the figures above are from case studies and do not specifically apply to Wakefield Park)

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