Protect Pittwater was established in 2017 by Pittwater residents dedicated to reinstating a strong and independent Pittwater Council. Our primary mission is to de-amalgamate (AKA ‘demerge’) from the Northern Beaches Council, and return to the original Pittwater Council boundaries. This will ensure better representation for our community and better protections for our unique environmental and urban characteristics of Pittwater for residents and visitors.
AKUNA BAY. AVALON. BAYVIEW. BILGOLA. BUNGAN BEACH. CAREEL BAY. CHURCH POINT. CLAREVILLE. COTTAGE POINT. DUFFY’S FOREST. ELANORA HEIGHTS. ELVINA BAY.
INGLESIDE. LOVETT BAY. MACKEREL BEACH. McCARRS CREEK. MONA VALE. MORNING BAY. NEWPORT. NARRABEEN. PALM BEACH. SCOTLAND ISLAND. WARRIEWOOD.
Pittwater Council, initially part of the Warringah Shire, was proclaimed as a separate municipality on May 1, 1992. It existed as an independent local council for about 24 years before being forced to amalgamate with Manly and Warringah Councils to form the Northern Beaches Council on May 12, 2016. This was despite strong local opposition, including an 89% vote against amalgamation in a Pittwater Council survey.
The NSW state government amalgamated 42 councils into 19 mega councils with the aim to achieve fiscal and efficiency benefits. As part of this ‘Fit for Future’ Program IPART (Independent Pricing &
Regulatory Tribunal) undertook a review of all NSW Councils and found that Pittwater Council:
The only criteria Pittwater did not satisfy was the minimum size requirement imposed on IPART by the NSW Government’s terms of reference which took some hundreds of pages to say that if the Council was smaller than the Government’s preferred merger option it did not have sufficient scale.
In other words, there was no possibility of Pittwater Council satisfying the scale and capacity criteria despite passing all other objective criteria.
