LOCAL Government NSW president Darcy Byrne gave evidence on Friday to a Parliamentary Inquiry into the operations of the NSW Reconstruction Authority detailing the urgent need for disaster recovery payments to be expedited for impacted councils.

With the exponential increase in disaster costs for local communities across New South Wales in recent years, there are many local councils and communities facing financial crises if overdue funds don’t flow urgently, LG NSW says.

Cr Byrne emphasised the need for a more streamlined payment of claims to councils and a greater investment in long-term resilience to avoid the impacts of disasters in the first place.

“The massive increase in floods, storms and fires across New South Wales has devastated many local councils and their communities,” Cr Byrne said.

“While the Reconstruction Authority is improving, the system for processing claims is inadequate with payments totalling hundreds of millions of dollars overdue to councils who are struggling with recovery.

“In Minister Saffin, regional communities have a proven champion who is fighting to fix this broken system and the need of these communities is urgent and cannot be ignored.”

Mayor Byrne pointed to recent examples of Mid Coast Council and Kempsey Shire Council, which are still awaiting the processing of claims totalling tens of millions of dollars each in the wake of the flooding events of May, 2025.

“In the Mid Coast Council area, the floods had an impact of $226.5 million on council transport and infrastructure,” Cr Byrne said.

“To date, the council has spent $43 million on emergency and immediate reconstruction works on its transport network and has only received $6.1 million from the NSW Reconstruction Authority.

“In the nearby council area of Kempsey, there was a $115 million impact, and that council has only received $5.7 million in funding.

“As we approach the one year anniversary of these devastating floods, it’s time recovery funding is paid in full.

“We know the local government sector is facing some real challenges with financial sustainability – particularly in rural, regional and remote communities,” he said.

“Having these unpaid claims on the books threatens the financial viability of these severely impacted councils.

“Too often we’re seeing claims for funding getting bogged down in red tape, leaving these councils out of pocket – often by millions of dollars for months, if not years, on end.

“This is grossly unfair – with councils facing a financial crisis that is absolutely not of their making. The harm from natural disasters is being compounded by bureaucratic delays.”

LGNSW is calling for immediate improvements to funding, co-ordination and resilience planning to protect communities now and into the future.

“We are calling for greater transparency from the NSW Reconstruction Authority in order to drive improvement,” Cr Byrne said.

“As a starting point, we want them to transparently publish data clearly showing the number of claims received, how many have been approved and paid and also detail the decision-making and processing timelines.”