The long-running battle between the Kangaroo Island Council and Island Beach landowner Alan Sheppard over his encroachment on to a public walkway may soon be over.
In 2003, the Supreme Court ordered the council to transfer 54 sq metres of the public walkway at Island Beach to Mr Sheppard.
Mr Sheppard had encroached on the walkway with the wall of his building.
Because the land is classified as a council road under legislation, the council was obliged to undertake public consultation.
However, the council believed public consultation would have been invalid because it would not be able to consider any of the responses, given that it had been ordered by the court to transfer the land anyway.
At the May council meeting last Friday, the council received advice from solicitors Norman Waterhouse that it “not undertake a road process order to close the land as a road” and instead seek a court order that the Registrar-General record that the land is closed as a road and then transfer it to Mr Sheppard.
The walkway will remain open to the public to access the beach.
The Supreme Court has ordered that Mr Sheppard bear the costs of the transfer so the council resolved on Friday to advise Mr Sheppard to seek the revised court order.
Mr Sheppard’s building works at Lot 76 Flinders Grove are the subject of a further action by the council for an encroachment onto the coastal reserve, allegedly committed during extensions to his property in 2006. That matter was being dealt with in-camera by the council.