Land Access and Compensation
When a project needs to cross private land and the landholder says no, the statutory clock and the courtroom are rarely the fastest way through. We resolve the access impasse, and the compensation behind it, before it becomes litigation.
Where these disputes come from
Resource, energy and infrastructure projects routinely need access to land they do not own — for exploration, drilling, easements, pipelines, transmission lines and haul roads. Statutory access and compensation regimes exist, but a landholder who feels unheard can stall a program for months or years, and each month of delay carries real cost long before a lawyer is involved. Where more than one proponent needs the same corridor or footprint, that is a related but distinct problem — see coexistence between mining, energy and renewables.
The dispute is rarely only about money. It is often about timing, water, biosecurity, the calving season, a bad experience with a previous operator, or simply not being treated with respect. A statutory notice served over the top of that resentment tends to harden it.
Why the legal route often backfires
Pursuing the full statutory access process can win the legal right and lose the relationship. The landholder digs in, goes to the local paper or the regulator, and a program that was weeks from starting sits idle. That drift from private grievance to public fight is the same pattern behind most environmental and community disputes. You may ultimately prevail, but the delay has already cost more than the compensation ever would have — and you still need that landholder, and their neighbours, for the next phase.
How we resolve them
Equipoise works the interests beneath the positions. We begin on the landholder’s side of the table, understand what the access actually threatens, and rebuild the arrangement around it: timing, conditions, rehabilitation, water security and a fair compensation figure tested against objective criteria rather than leverage. Agreements are documented to bind, to last, and to survive the staff turnover that undoes most project relationships.
If your situation warrants a conversation.
Everything you share is confidential and goes directly to Nick, the principal. Equipoise takes a small number of matters each year — billed hourly to scope the matter, then a single fixed fee once its complexity is clear.