By Ian Neubauer
A licensed premises in Kings Cross has won a two-year long legal battle against the City of Sydney over its ‘legal consent’ to operate as a nightclub.
“I’m absolutely over the moon,” Ladylux proprietor, Scott Bayly, told TheShout this morning. “We never had a problem to start with and we should never had gone through this.”
Ladylux’s legal problems began in 2006 when Bayly claims City officials told him the premises had no development approval to trade as a nightclub and counselled him to apply for retrospective approval for a change of use from a restaurant. But the application was refused in August, and a June 2007 ruling by the NSW Land and Environment Court supported the City’s decision to dismiss Ladylux’s appeal.
Yet Ladylux’s legal problems may not be over yet. According to the Draft Late Night Trading Premises Development Control Plan 2007, which the City prepared in the period it was attempting to curtail the use of Ladylux, the club now resides in a zoning area in which trading hours are limited to midnight.
Given that Ladylux does brisk business after midnight, its exclusion from the late-night trading zone may grant the City a new angle to curtail the use of the club.
But Anthony Whealy of Gardens Lawyers, which represented Ladylux in court, said today’s result showed Ladylux has and always had legal consent to trade as a nightclub with late-trading rights.
“The result was a complete vindication for Ladylux. They won on every single point the City raised. The court agreed the club always had approval to operate as a nightclub,” he said, adding that Bayly was now entitled to claim legal costs against the City which have surpassed $100,000.
The City of Sydney was contacted for comment but did not reply before the story was posted online.
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