Service area
Building design and planning approvals in Eastern Suburbs
Waverley and Woollahra. Two small councils, two separate instrument sets, and the tightest sites we work on.
The instruments in force
Waverley DCP 2022 Amendment 6 was adopted 10 March 2026 and took effect 18 April 2026 — recent enough that anything written before then may cite a superseded control. Woollahra runs LEP 2014 and DCP 2015, both long-standing and heavily amended; the Woollahra DCP has passed twenty amendments, so the amendment number matters as much as the year. Waverley's DCP also identifies areas with their own specific guidelines, Bondi Junction among them.
Verified 7 September 2026. LEPs are amended constantly and DCP chapters change independently of each other — we confirm the in-force version against your address rather than working from this page.
One page, two councils — and why that's honest
Waverley and Woollahra are small, adjacent, and similar in the ways that matter to a designer: expensive land, tight lots, a great deal of heritage, and a high proportion of attached and semi-detached housing. We've written them together because the design problem is the same one, not because the controls are.
The controls are not. They are separate councils with separate LEPs, separate DCPs and separate assessment cultures, and a control that holds in Bronte does not hold in Woollahra. Anything on this page is orientation; the actual figures come from reading the instrument that applies to your address.
What makes the eastern suburbs difficult
Heritage, at scale. Both LGAs carry extensive heritage conservation areas and large numbers of individual items — Paddington and Woollahra in particular are close to wall-to-wall. In a conservation area, external alterations are generally excluded from the Housing Alterations Code, which means a development application with a heritage impact statement rather than a certificate. That is not an edge case here; it is the default.
Attached and semi-detached stock. Terraces and semis dominate. A common wall takes a project out of the Housing Code entirely, and there are specific exclusions for external alterations to the front of an existing attached or semi-detached dwelling. Several pathways close at once on a building type that is completely ordinary in these suburbs.
Small lots. Frontages under the code minimums, floor area caps reached long ago by the existing building, and side setbacks that a first-floor addition cannot meet. The floor area headroom calculation is usually the whole conversation.
The coast and the harbour. Coastal management provisions along the Bondi–Bronte–Tamarama stretch, and foreshore controls along the harbour edge from Rose Bay to Point Piper. Both are decisive rather than negotiable, and coastal land takes a project out of complying development.
Views. View sharing is a live assessment matter here in a way it is not further south, and it is argued on merit rather than measured. It is also one of the more common grounds of objection.
Expect a DA, and design for one
Most work in these two LGAs is a development application, and the reason is the site rather than the design — heritage, attachment, coastal, or a lot under the code minimums. Complying development exists here but it applies to a much smaller share of projects than it does in the southern councils we work in.
That changes how the application should be written. A merit assessment means the statement of environmental effects is doing real work: engaging with the conservation area's character, dealing with view sharing and overlooking directly, and addressing the non-compliances rather than hoping they aren't noticed. On a heritage-affected site the heritage impact statement is not a formality either — it is frequently the document the assessment turns on.
What we do here
- Alterations and additions — the overwhelming majority of the work. Rear extensions, second-storey additions, and internal reconfiguration on terraces and semis
- Heritage-affected design, where the conversation starts with the streetscape rather than the envelope
- Strata and dual-lot projects, which are more common here and bring owners' consent complications that need sorting before lodgement
- Substantial alterations to harbour and coastal properties, where the foreshore building line and the view analysis set the form
- Change of use along the Oxford Street, Double Bay and Bondi Junction commercial strips. See change of use
For sites in Randwick, which adjoins both, see Randwick — it has its own page because its DCP changed in July 2026.
Suburbs we work in
Bondi · Bondi Beach · Bondi Junction · North Bondi · Tamarama · Bronte · Waverley · Charing Cross · Queens Park · Dover Heights · Rose Bay · Vaucluse · Watsons Bay · Double Bay · Bellevue Hill · Point Piper · Darling Point · Edgecliff · Woollahra · Paddington
Not an exhaustive list of the LGA. If your suburb isn't here, we almost certainly still work there — send the address.
Have a site in Eastern Suburbs?
Send us the address. We'll run the controls that apply to it and tell you what it can carry.