MELBOURNE city councillors will be stopped from holding private meetings with developers who want to lobby them on building projects.
Councillors have agreed that senior council planning officers must be present at meetings, in order to avoid perceptions of conflicts of interest after big donations went to some candidates at last October's election.
Lord Mayor Robert Doyle and his team received more than $100,000 from developers such as Central Equity, Richard Gu from the AXF Group, and northbank developer Clement Lee.
Rival candidate Cr Ken Ong, who is chairman of the planning committee, also declared donations from companies linked to Mr Lee and from a consultant working for Mr Gu.
The local government watchdog is investigating claims of cash-for-access that were made during the city council election campaign and also a bribery allegation going back to 2010.
Last week, councillors agreed to a new protocol that there be no more meetings with individual developers unless a senior planning officer also attended.
Cr Doyle said it was a good first step to ensure there was no perception of undue influence in the planning process - "so you don't have any suggestion that people have been able to lobby you in a way where it's unclear or not transparent."
The recommendation came from a working party involving Cr Ong, newly elected councillors Stephen Mayne and Rohan Leppert, and senior planning staff.
Cr Mayne said the move was necessary to maintain public confidence in the city's planning system.
"In an environment where councillors or their campaign staff have been directly asking developers for donations, we need to ensure there are no inappropriate perceptions around access to councillors," he said.
But Cr Doyle said he was disappointed the new protocol didn't include the interaction of councillors with objectors to developments.
"A lot of the most acrimonious planning issues that we have are not the major commercial developers - they're next-door neighbours and developments in back yards," he said.
Among other changes, all councillors will receive regular presentations from senior staff on planning issues in addition to the normal written briefings that are given.
And the council will vote on a proposal to publicly disclose the views of its planning officers on big projects, especially those where the state Planning Minister has jurisdiction.
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