Neighbour complaints in NSW after Community Justice Centres: A practical opportunity for councils

For many years, Community Justice Centres gave New South Wales residents a practical, low-cost pathway for resolving neighbourhood disputes before they escalated into legal conflict.  Councils were frequent referrers, particularly for lower-level neighbour complaints involving noise, animals, trees, fences, stormwater, parking, access and amenity impacts.  That referral pathway was valuable because it allowed council officers to direct residents toward a service designed to facilitate communication, reduce hostility and achieve voluntary agreements.

That landscape has now changed.  Since 1 July 2025, CJC mediation is no longer available for most general neighbourhood disputes, apart from limited matters such as court-referred disputes and incorporated association matters.  The practical consequence is clear: many complaints that might once have been diverted to an external mediation pathway will now return to councils, private mediators, legal advisers, tribunals or the courts.

This creates a challenge, but also an opportunity.  Councils are often better positioned than a stand-alone mediation service to deal with difficult neighbour complaints because councils can combine communication, investigation, technical understanding, local knowledge and enforcement powers.  The key is having a process that uses each of those strengths at the right time.

Why mediation alone was never enough

• Mediation works best when both parties are willing to participate in good faith.

• Many complaints are not simply misunderstandings; they involve repeated behaviour, conflicting evidence, entrenched hostility or genuine uncertainty about whether a nuisance exists.

• A mediator cannot gather technical evidence, inspect a site, compel cooperation, assess regulatory thresholds or enforce an outcome.

• Some complaints are urgent, persistent or harmful enough to require investigation and formal action, not just conversation.

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The weakness of the old model was not that mediation lacked value.  It was that mediation was being asked to carry too much of the system.  When a complaint could be resolved through a facilitated conversation, the CJC model was often highly effective.  But where facts were disputed, parties were unwilling, or the impact was ongoing, the process had no practical way to move from discussion to evidence, decision and resolution.

And because some in the Local Government Sector were using the CJC for every complaint, regardless of the above examples, the system became overloaded, success rates dropped and costs increased.

Why councils should not default to the courts

Without a general CJC pathway, unresolved complaints can drift toward private mediation, legal letters, tribunal proceedings or court action.  That is rarely a good outcome for residents or councils.  Legal pathways are slow, expensive and adversarial, both parties paying to build a case.  They can harden positions, increase stress and leave neighbourhood relationships permanently damaged.

Council-led resolution can achieve better outcomes when it is timely, structured and evidence-based.  Councils understand local conditions, have established complaint pathways, can communicate with both parties, can investigate where appropriate and can use statutory tools when voluntary resolution fails.

• Residents receive a clear process rather than being left to navigate private legal options.

• Officers can triage complaints and focus resources on matters with genuine impact.

• Early communication can prevent avoidable escalation.

• Evidence can be collected before positions become entrenched.

• Enforcement, where necessary, can be based on reliable information (particularly 3^rd party evidence) rather than individual parties presenting their (often biased) assertion.

A better model for neighbour complaint service delivery

The starting point is not technology.  It is process.  A strong neighbour complaint process should be simple for residents to understand, efficient for officers to administer and robust enough to withstand scrutiny if formal action becomes necessary.

There are several simple changes that can be made in most cases to deliver better outcomes:

• Equip your officers with the tools of mediation.  They don’t need to become mediators, but understanding the basics of mediation, and having processes that consciously explore those issues will help solve many cases.

• Review your processes to make sure it is time-responsive to tackle cases before they escalate.  But include a progressively escalating process to score easy wins first, then deploying more rigorous processes only when the initial phases fail.  The staged process can help with evidence gathering if enforcement actions are required later.

• Explore where technology can help with these cases.  Would drone imagery assist?  Can you track the origins of dumped garbage, could you use a service like NoiseNet to solve noise complaints?

Technology is often a missing link

Think about how you currently solve neighbour disputes?  Is it effectively the same process as 20 years ago?  If so, you need to explore if technology offers a significant benefit.

Technology will not replace good judgement, communication skills or sound regulatory practice.  But it can close the gap that has always made neighbour complaints difficult: the gap between allegation and proof.

This is where systems such as NoiseNet can be important.  In noise complaints, NoiseNet helps councils understand frequency, duration, timing, level and patterns of noise in a way that is difficult to achieve through traditional methods alone.  It gives officers better information, helps residents understand the evidence, and supports both negotiated outcomes and formal enforcement when that becomes necessary.

What about costs?

There is no doubt that the burden of these complaints will fall to Local Government, regardless of what actions are taken. Even if councils decide to ignore the complaints, it won't stop calls to the call centre and demands for action.

And then there is the potential impact on the community as a whole. Communities that are mismanaged, where environmental or health issues persist, or where conflict between neighbours is ongoing and festering are not healthy. It impacts on wellbeing and economic performance of the communities. Tackling and quickly resolving these issues is good for the community and good for the councils.

There is also a legitimate argument that the State Government should redirect some of the funding from the CJC towards local-government activity to tackle neighbour disputes. As we argue here - councils are capable of delivering a more reliable service, impacting on more cases and solving them more decisively. This is good for the state as well as the councils.

The opportunity for councils

The closure of the broad CJC referral pathway is not simply a loss of an external service.  It is a prompt for councils to redesign how neighbour complaints are managed.  The best model will not be purely mediational, purely legal or purely technological.  It will combine early communication, clear expectations, staged escalation, reliable evidence, practical mediation and appropriate enforcement.

For residents, that means a fairer and clearer pathway.  For councils, it means fewer unresolved complaints, better use of officer time and more defensible decisions.  For communities, it means disputes are more likely to be resolved before they become entrenched, expensive and damaging.

If your council is facing a surge of neighbour complaints and you are looking for a way forward, it might be time to review your processes.  NoiseNet can help provide the evidence base needed to resolve noise disputes earlier, mediate more effectively and enforce more confidently where required.