What’s going on at Coffs Harbour Racecourse?

Cover image courtesy of Coffs Harbour Racing Club

Coffs Harbour trainer Peter Evans announced last week that he is stepping away from racing, bringing public attention to a dispute that has affected a group of trainers at the racecourse for approximately 18 months.

In a Facebook post widely shared around 800 times across the racing industry, Evans described the situation as a “genuine crisis” and called for compensation for trainers who say they have lost the value of stable buildings they purchased, constructed or maintained.

Evans said his family purchased a 14-box building at the racecourse in 2017 under a contract referring to a “purchase of stables.”

“We paid stamp duty, and yet the building is now effectively not ours, and worthless to us,” he wrote. “An investment we made in good faith has been lost for no acceptable reason. We are devastated.”

The post drew attention because the Evans family is not alone. A number of trainers at Coffs Harbour say they bought stable blocks, or paid for interests attached to them, under arrangements that had operated for decades. Some built the stables themselves. Others bought from retiring trainers. Money changed hands, buildings were improved and, in several cases, the interests were later transferred again.

Those trainers have since been told they did not own the buildings in the way they believed they did.

How did it get to this?

Coffs Harbour Racecourse sits on Crown land. For years, Coffs Harbour Racing Club managed the site and issued the leases and subleases under which trainers occupied their stable blocks.

That changed in 2024, when Racing NSW was appointed Crown Land Manager of five racecourses: Coffs Harbour, Port Macquarie, Inverell, Queanbeyan and Armidale. The transfer covered leases, licences, improvements, equipment and other records attached to the reserves, and a later Gazette notice transferred the existing Coffs Harbour and Queanbeyan leases and licences to Racing NSW.

The appointment gave Racing NSW responsibility for reviewing the agreements already in place, including those covering the stable blocks. It was during that review that trainers say they were told they did not own the buildings as they had believed.

The trainers accept that the land belongs to the Crown. The argument is over what they believed they were buying, what they were told, and what could be transferred when one trainer sold to another.

The belief for many, trainers say, had been that the informal rolling lease arrangements would continue, and that they could pass the stable blocks on as they understood others had before them.

One trainer, who asked not to be named, told TTR he emptied his superannuation to pay $250,000 for a stable block shortly before Racing NSW took over management of the site. Both he and the seller say they checked with the club before the transaction went ahead, and allege they were told the lease would be extended. The club has been contacted to clarify.

Another trainer said their family had spent between $60,000 and $80,000 improving buildings they had occupied for years. In 2023, the club is also said to have offered to purchase stable buildings from another trainer, who chose not to sell.

The contracts and circumstances differ, which is part of the difficulty in untangling exactly what each trainer bought and what rights came with it. Several trainers told TTR the training centre would not exist in its current form without their money.

“Coffs Harbour's development as a training centre was made possible because trainers and industry participants built their own stable blocks on racecourse land leased from the Crown,” local racing participant Julie Evans wrote in an open letter to newsofthearea.com.au last week.

The NSW Trainers Association accepted that many participants genuinely believed they had bought an asset.

“There is no doubt this has been an extremely emotional issue for a number of trainers and participants who genuinely believed they had acquired an asset that could be bought and sold,” it said. Its legal advice was that the head lease and subleases had always provided that, once those agreements ended, improvements made by the lessee became the property of the lessor.

TTR spoke to the Crown Land office, who confirmed that, while the Crown Land Management Act 2016 had come into effect in 2018, the legislation previously governing the land said the same thing. There is no way to own assets on Crown land.

What did the club know?

Former Coffs Harbour Racing Club chief executive Tim Saladine spoke publicly about the dispute in February 2025. He said the club was “certainly sympathetic” to the trainers, but described it as “a little bit naive” for them to believe they owned the stable buildings outright.

“You can transfer a sublease and that's always been done with the Minister's consent and the Crown land manager's, which has obviously, historically, been the race club,” he said. “That's always been allowed, but whether there was money exchanged was never disclosed to the race club. We're aware that some people were able to get money for these leases, some people saw it as a good investment.”

His comments draw a distinction between transferring a sublease and selling a privately owned building. For the trainers now facing losses, that distinction matters. They believed the interests had value because they had repeatedly been bought and sold. Some contracts referred to the purchase of stables, while other purchasers say they sought approval before proceeding. The prices paid were based on an expectation that the interest could later be passed on.

Racing NSW says that expectation was wrong.

“Unfortunately, prior to our appointment, some parties had purchased leases on the false assumption that in doing so, they would have legal ownership of the Crown land assets,” it said in a response provided through the NSWTA.

“This is not possible under the Act and nothing they have signed has ever provided that right. You simply cannot own Crown land.”

Racing NSW said its appointment had not changed the legal position, and that the leases had always dealt with ownership of improvements. The NSWTA supported that view, saying the position had always existed under the Act regardless of how the arrangements were understood over the decades. The practice continued regardless. Trainers paid large sums for stable blocks and treated them as assets that could later be sold.

Saladine left the club at the end of 2025. Coffs Harbour Racing Club was contacted for comment.

The new leases

When Racing NSW became Crown land manager, the lease arrangements were reviewed and trainers were offered renewed subleases. Racing NSW says no tenant has been evicted or asked to leave.

“All tenants of the Coffs Harbour Racecourse have been offered renewed leases since Racing NSW was appointed Crown Land Manager over two years ago,” it said. “Nobody has been evicted or asked to leave.”

It said the aim was for the stables to stay in the hands of active trainers without increasing their costs.

The reported rent was $25 a box each week, with trainers still responsible for maintenance and utilities, compared with $20 a week for club-owned boxes where the club covered those costs. The NSWTA disputed suggestions that Racing NSW had imposed substantial new rents, saying the renewed subleases were intended to let existing trainers keep operating.

But those who have refused to sign say the rent is only part of the issue.

Several fear that signing a new lease would leave them as tenants in buildings they believed they had bought, with no obvious way to recover the money they paid through a future sale. Some have stopped spending on repairs because they do not know whether that money would ever come back.

The NSWTA said it negotiated a pause with Racing NSW in early 2025 while the head lease, underleases and proposed subleases were reviewed. It said Racing NSW was also concerned that some stable interests were held by third parties and sublet to trainers for a profit.

Racing NSW said some leases were held by people who were not trainers and then subleased “at a considerable extra cost” to working participants.

“This practice has led to our trainers paying much more in stable rent than they should and we are determined to rectify this issue and cease the practice of subleasing which is in breach of the Crown Land leases,” it said. “Naturally, we are facing some objection to this given that those third parties had intended to continue profiting from our trainers into the future.”

That may explain some of the disagreement, but it does not deal with trainers such as Evans, who say they bought and occupied buildings for their own businesses. The NSWTA said it supports future arrangements that place subleases directly in the hands of licensed trainers wherever the law allows.

“Not every issue has an outcome that satisfies everyone involved,” it said.

Who is responsible for the track?

The stable dispute is not the only concern being raised at Coffs Harbour. Several trainers who rent boxes from the club, and who claim no ownership interest in their stables, told TTR they were unsure who is now responsible for maintaining the course.

One said track work had stalled: “We were supposed to get more sand put in the sand track months ago, but it hasn't happened.”

Another described the internal roads as “atrocious” and said he was worried about horses picking up stone bruises. One said the uncertainty was the hardest part. “We are just left wondering who is supposed to be running it all.”

The question they keep returning to is where the club's responsibility ends and Racing NSW's begins. As Crown Land Manager, Racing NSW is responsible for the care, control and management of the reserve and the agreements over the land. The trainers say that since the handover, they are no longer sure who to raise maintenance issues with, or who is meant to fund them.

“If it's Racing NSW, then they need to be putting money into the infrastructure,” one said. “The country clubs are trying their best, but they're hamstrung by finances and reliant on grants from Racing NSW to do anything.”

TTR reached out to Racing NSW, who clarified that responsibility for maintaining the racecourse facilities remains with the clubs under all Crown Land leases managed by Racing NSW.

Where does it leave the trainers?

Several Coffs Harbour trainers say they are near breaking point. Some have refused to sign. Others say they cannot sell interests they expected would carry value when they retired or left racing.

Evans has now closed his operation. His wife, Julie, wrote that trainers had spent 18 months under extreme stress without reaching an agreement that recognised the money they believed they had invested.

“While Racing NSW rightly places great importance on the welfare of horses, it appears that the welfare, livelihoods and wellbeing of the people who have invested in and supported the industry have not been afforded the same level of care,” she wrote.

Racing NSW said it would keep working with trainers to establish compliant leases, and that its general manager of participant welfare, Phil O'Brien, had contacted tenants known to be struggling and offered counselling and support.

The NSWTA said it would continue working with Racing NSW to ensure future arrangements were “transparent, legally sound and, wherever possible, place licensed trainers, not third parties, at the centre.”

Racing NSW and the NSWTA say the law has always prevented trainers from privately owning buildings on Crown land. The trainers say they paid real money under a system that had been operating for years, built and maintained the facilities, and in some cases checked with the club before buying. The remaining problem is the money already spent, and whether those trainers will be left to absorb the loss.

“The question must be asked: is this a humane, fair and moral way to treat people within the racing industry?” Julie Evans posed.