The council also wants the court to declare that decisions made by the Planning Minister and head of the Planning Department are legally unreasonable or irrational.

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Ku-ring-gai councillors voted unanimously last Wednesday to go to court over the government’s transport-oriented housing reforms, which it claims will destroy the heritage and tree canopy of suburbs in Sydney’s north shore.

Ku-ring-gai’s Liberal mayor Sam Ngai said the Minns government had ignored his council’s concerns about infrastructure and green space.

Ngai said in a mayoral minute that he believed the changes put the area’s garden-style heritage conservation areas at risk.

“Our early legal advice indicated that this will fatally weaken local controls on heritage, setbacks and urban canopy,” he said.

The legal action is a major escalation of a months-long stoush between the council and Minns government over housing reforms, with Planning Minister Paul Scully last week accusing the council of “wasting ratepayers’ money to try and stop housing”.

Scully said he would not comment on the case as it is before the court.

“The NSW government is committed to confronting the housing crisis head-on,” he said. “The bottom line is, we all have a shared responsibility to provide solutions so that there are more homes available for families.”

Ku-ring-gai Independent councillor Martin Smith said the council was confident in its position regarding legal action “even though it may seem like a David and Goliath battle”.

“We firmly believe that our stance holds significant weight and is not a random attempt to protect our area from being ruined by poor planning,” he said.

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Friends of Ku-ring-gai Environment president Kathy Cowley said the community group supported the council’s legal action against the Minns government’s “top-down, one-size-fits-all housing policy which is undemocratic, unaffordable and unliveable”.

“We are concerned about the proliferation of defective ‘cookie cutter’ apartments that are unaffordable,” she said. “The resulting development will be unsustainable and environmentally destructive.”

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