Residents of The Channon are calling on Lismore City Council to halt plans to construct a footpath on Standing Street, a proposal the community has consistently opposed since 2023.
They say in a media release, “In December, Council voted 10–1 in favour of the footpath, despite sustained objections from residents and local organisations. During that meeting, councillors were told that The Channon Public School and its Parents and Citizens Association (P&C) supported the project. Both the school and the P&C have since confirmed this was incorrect”.
The Channon Public School P&C has written formally to councillors stating it does not support the footpath.
P&C President China Tisdall said the decision was unanimous.
“The P&C has met and it is unanimous that we do not support the proposed footpath at all.
“We believe it would reduce safety for our children and represents an unnecessary waste of resources,’ Mr Tisdall said.
The project is funded under Transport for NSW’s Get Active program, intended to encourage active transport. Under Get Active guidelines shade trees should not be removed.
In 2023 residents of every occupied house in the village signed a petition* opposing the footpath as detrimental to the village. After continued objections, in 2024 Council commissioned a safety audit and argued the footpath was required due to pedestrian risk.
Residents say key questions remain unanswered, including why no safety audit has been conducted on other, more hazardous streets in the village, and how concreting over an existing grass verge improves safety.
Standing Street resident Billie Beasley-Payne, who grew up in the village, said the street has long been a safe route for children.
“I walked and rode my bike to school along this street for years,” Ms Beasley-Payne said.
“We don’t need this path. Concrete paths are slippery in the wet, increase runoff and drainage problems, and this 1.8-metre-wide path would remove shade trees and permanently change the character of our green village.”
Councillor Jasmine Knight-Smith has lodged a rescission motion, giving Council the opportunity to reconsider the decision.
“We are asking councillors to listen to the community this time and take our very real concerns into account,” Ms Beasley-Payne said.
“A community letter calling on Council to review its decision has been endorsed by a wide range of local groups, including The Channon Public School P&C, The Channon Pre-School Committee, The Channon Hall Committee, The Channon Resilience Hub, The Channon Tennis Club and The Channon Fishing Club”.
Summary of community objections, as supplied by Channon residents:
Local knowledge
- Local knowledge is important in planning changes to where people live.
- Residents have been walking to school up Standing Street for more than 100 years, with no recorded road safety incident. The road has wide grass verges and very little traffic.
- It is not a through road. It leads to the school, the RFS and then to a private road at the top of Standing Street.
- Residents weren’t consulted about how we use the streets; where children walk to school, what the hazards are, or what would help us be more active.
Safety audit
- The safety audit was only done on one block of Standing Street, after residents’ objections to the path. It appears to have been done to justify the path, not to assess village road safety.
- Why was there no safety audit of Nimbin Street? A number of children walk the length of Nimbin Street to get to school. This is a one lane (seriously pot-holed) street with two-way traffic and no verge along most of it.
- Why no safety audit on Mill Street between the shop and the pre-school? Again mostly no verge.
Climate considerations
- The Channon is on sandy well-drained soil and the grass verges on Standing Street are walkable in the wet. Concrete footpaths in the Channon can get dangerously slippery with rain and leaf litter.
- Concrete paths in high rainfall areas are a problem for drainage. The older houses on Standing Street are below road level, and close to the road. Replacing the grass verge with concrete will lead to increased run off. There are no gutters on this road.
- The Council went ahead with half of the path outside The Channon Public School. The school did not ask for the path but did not object once it had started. This concrete path from the school to Nimbin Street is already causing excess run off and is slippery after rain. It is much steeper than the road and not safe for prams, cyclists. Leads straight into a drain ditch.
- We have a shaded bower walkway on the corner of Nimbin Street. The planned concrete path would remove a stand of trees that were planted as a windbreak for the house at 20 Standing Street that lost its roof in a storm decades ago. The trees serve as both an effective windbreak and a shaded walking track.
Get active issues
- The proposed path crosses the loading bays at the Channon store. It leads directly to the area where people queue for petrol, and a tricky intersection. It does not connect to other ‘active transport’ networks.
- The path, 180 metres of concrete, would do nothing to make our community more active, as was the purpose of the Get Active grant.
- If we’d been consulted there are other options such as an all-weather path to Coronation Park that could fit the criteria for Get Active grants. There is no safe pedestrian access from the shop or the school to the Oval.
No prior consultation – and no public information session
- The village residents signed a petition in 2023 unanimously objecting to the path. This was updated in January 2026 to include new residents. Residents of all occupied households in the village signed the petition. We have repeatedly asked for a public consultation meeting to ask questions and discuss possibilities.
- Council staff have popped out unannounced and chatted to anyone they find in the village, telling them where the path is to go. We do not view that as consultation. There was selective correspondence about the different routes, but no public meeting or information session.
- The recent online survey was not seen by many people until too late, being only for 2 weeks coinciding with the school holidays. Similar council surveys are 4 to 6 weeks. But the 18 per cent response rate is as statistically valid result, and yet it was ignored. Why did council ask for our views if they were to be ignored?
- We DO value the safety of our children and all residents.
‘The Channon is the sort of neighbourhood the Get Active program is trying to create. Many people walk in the mornings up to the bush track at the top of Standing Street, we have a tennis club and frisbee golf and touch football, the playground and walking track, and nearby local swimming holes. The Channon village is not an urban setting and we need solutions that recognise how we live and use our village. We are open to suggestions that are in keeping with the character of our village’.
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