A master plan for the area was proposed to be reinstated after it was rescinded to allow for sporting fields spanning approximately 10 hectares.

St John's Junior Rugby League Football Club approached council in 2021 with a plan to build four full-sized playing fields at the site but now a group of citizens are calling for the decision to not go ahead.

Healthy Rivers' Barbara Sutherland believes the current council need to turn over a new leaf after more than six months in their current roles.

"That the actions of the former council were so inappropriate in terms of being accountable to the community but to right the wrong the current council has to put it back to the community for environmental use only," she said.

Earlier this year, councillor Josh Black expressed his disappointment at the lack of community consultation on the project surrounding the master plan for the area.

Ms Sutherland believes Cr Black's views are in the right interest of the public and she is confident strategic plans should be followed more thoroughly.

"Basically what I'm saying is council has jumped the gun because we have strategic plans that guide the community and council," she said.

"Those strategic plans are for everybody, those strategic plans are in place to tell us how we use our open space and sporting fields.

"That includes predicting how many people we are going to have, Dubbo is growing at an enormous rate so this stuff is really important."

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After conversations with people at the council, Ms Sutherland believes both sporting fields and open land would not work at Regand Park.

"I spoke to the CEO Murray Wood because in a number of those plans there was a prediction that there would be a shortage in both open land and sporting fields," she said.

"It's not just one or the other, however, the shortage of open space would be up to seven times the size of sporting fields.

"As Murray Wood has said, they are updating their plans, everyone can understand because this has been a really turbulent time.

"With all the elections, new council and other things, all this stuff takes time. But out of the blue comes this consultation for the northern and southern areas of Regand Park.

"Everyone knows there is not enough room for both, you cannot satisfy the needs of the environment or the sporting groups."

Ms Sutherland believes mayor Mathew Dickerson and the other councillors could have a few options on what to do.

"Inform the community of what the options are then do the consultation," she said.

"Council is jumping the gun, they are compounding the issue which was caused by the former council.

"He (Cr Dickerson) needs to be transparent, the community is not stuck with the council and Ben Shields decided to do.

"The current council to have any integrity need to underdo the wrongs, they are our council and this is what they must do.

"The current council are using the decisions of the former council which were never implemented to take action in this current one. It's absolutely wrong and not totally transparent, the consultation is a sham."

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