At its February meeting, Port Macquarie-Hastings Council adopted a seven point plan for its 51 existing lots. Council will commence stage 1 planning to prepare an outline plan.

Le Clos landowners will also submit a planning proposal in parallel to stage 1 planning in order to assist in informing the planning process.

The development was first spearheaded by Claude Cassegrain more than 25 years ago.

In 2010, the Port Macquarie News reported that a plan to re-divide Le Clos Verdun, if approved, would deliver a rural residential lifestyle close to Port Macquarie.

An application before the state government would see 140 rural residential lots under community title.

Le Clos Verdun, was created in the late 1980s, was registered in 1989 as a shared lot viticulture/residential farming enterprise, the Port News said.

A second enterprise, Le Clos Francois, also formed part of the original development.

The Le Clos Sancrox subdivision has been the subject of a moratorium on development for a number of years due to sewage and bushfire management constraints. 

Council staff have met with representatives of the estate with the aim of establishing a way forward to allow development in some form to proceed, according to a report tabled at the meeting.

"The Sancrox area is no longer proposed for rural residential subdivision and any reconfiguration of the existing estate should be consistent with the desired long term vision for development in the Sancrox area as a whole," the report noted.

"Concepts for the future development of the Le Clos Sancrox subdivision have also been received from Land Dynamics.

"Since council's 2018 resolution, Maurice Driscoll Consulting has provided written confirmation that the land owners are in a position to provide 100 per cent agreement to the formation of a coordinated legal entity."

Any proposal for the Le Clos estate will be considered by council in parallel with, but not before completion of the preparation of the outline plan.

Mr Driscoll was disappointed with the response from council adding that he expected that the outline plan would commence in 2018/19.

"That would be a path to resolution," he told the open forum at the February meeting.

"My phone is ringing red hot."

Land Dynamics' Graham Burns said just three homes were started before council put a stop to the development of the 51 lots.

"A lot of the infrastructure is now in place," he said.

"We believe there is a fairly straight forward solution to the moratorium put in place.

"We understand there is a lot of priority issues for council to deal with. We can assist with that work," he said.

Cr Rob Turner said the situation (of the moratorium) was quite unfortunate for the landowners.

"They went into an innovative landowner model and then everything didn't work out through no fault of their own," he said.

"A moratorium was placed on this land 13 years ago. That moratorium was, essentially, because of sewer and bushfire issues.

"Thirteen years later we are at a point where UGMS (Urban Growth Management Strategy) has been adopted and there is significant growth in Port Macquarie.

"We are also at a point where the original plan for rural residential has fallen out of favour," he said.

"These owners have lived through quite a period of time where they have owned unoccupied land.

I think we have a bit of an obligation to make this a priority on their behalf and give this the priority it deserves, he said.

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