During nine weeks of hearings on the environmental impact of the road last year, all four councils opposed different aspects of the North East Link, spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on lawyers and barristers to argue against it. Loading Ultimately, the councils argued the Environment Effects Statement process for the road had been so badly botched it needed to be redone. A spokeswoman for the state government said what councils did was a matter for them. "The process regarding this road has been open and transparent from the start," she said. "We took this project to an election and it was overwhelmingly endorsed by the Victorian people."

Experienced planning barrister Adrian Finanzio, SC – who acted for three of the councils at the hearings – is set to act for the councils again. The councils would ultimately pay lawyers an estimated $250,000 to $300,000 between them to fund the legal challenge. Mr Finanzio represented Yarra and Moreland councils in their 2014 Supreme Court challenge against the Napthine government’s East West Link project. The case was never heard in full because the East West Link was ditched by Labor. Mr Finanzio would not comment on the possible legal challenge to the North East Link when contacted on Monday, but during last year’s environmental hearings he was scathing about the process that led to Mr Wynne making his final decision to proceed with the road. "The Environmental Effects Statement has been comprehensively demonstrated to be inadequate," he said at the time. "The only appropriate outcome would be for the project to be deferred pending the preparation of a supplementary EES."

The government rejected that argument, saying redoing the environmental hearings would add too much time. If the case against the North East Link goes ahead, the councils are set to argue they did not have the chance to properly assess the impact of the road during the 2019 environmental hearings. This was because they were asked to examine draft designs of the toll road rather than the final plan, which could be vastly different from what was presented at the environmental hearings. Loading Replay Replay video Play video Play video Construction and engineering companies now tendering to build the massive project will deliver their final designs to the government this year. This will ultimately mean a different project gets built than the one evaluated at the environmental hearings.

The legal challenge comes as the government’s two other big transport projects, the West Gate Tunnel toll road and the Metro Tunnel rail link, are beset by budget blowouts and delays. Loading The opposition's planning and local government spokesman Tim Smith said councils should seek a legal review of Mr Wynne's "farcical" North East Link decision. Mr Wynne’s approval for the road "was always a foregone conclusion", he said. "Richard Wynne was told by Daniel Andrews that approving the road was the conclusion that he was to draw," Mr Smith said. "The process was a farce from the outset – Labor circumvented all due process to guarantee they got the result they wanted." All four councils were contacted by The Age on Monday ahead of meetings to decide on a legal challenge. Boroondara and Banyule were due to hold confidential meetings late on Monday night, Manningham on Tuesday, and Whitehorse this week.

None would make any comment about what their decisions would be, but councillors at all four confirmed a legal challenge was likely.