Approvals and documentation
Getting it approved
Four pathways, and picking the wrong one costs more than picking the wrong designer.
Every project in NSW reaches approval by one of a small number of routes, and the route is decided by the site and the proposal — not by preference. A complying development certificate is faster and cheaper than a development application, but it is only available where the site and the design meet every standard in the code, without exception. One failed test and the pathway closes.
Most of the money wasted on planning is wasted here: a scheme designed for one pathway, then discovered to need another. We run the pathway test before anything is drawn.
The four routes
Complying development (CDC)
Approval by a registered certifier against a fixed set of standards, without going to council. Fast where it's available, and closed the moment the site or the design fails a single test.
Complying development certificates →Development application (DA)
A merit assessment by council against the LEP, the DCP and section 4.15. Slower, but it can accommodate a variation, a constrained site, and a proposal no code contemplates.
Development applications →Modifications
Changing an approval you already hold, under section 4.55. The scale of the change decides which subsection applies, and that decides how long it takes.
Modifications →Building information certificates
The route for work already built without approval, or built differently to the approval. Regularises the building's status; it does not retrospectively grant consent.
Building information certificates →After approval, a construction certificate is what lets work start on a DA-approved project.
What decides the pathway
Four things, roughly in order of how often they close the CDC door:
- The land. Heritage items and heritage conservation areas, flood control lots, bushfire prone land, land subject to a landslide risk, foreshore and coastal land. Some of these close complying development outright; others impose extra standards.
- The zone and the lot. The Housing Code requires R1, R2, R3, R4 or RU5 zoning, a lot of at least 200 m², and at least 6 m of width at the building line (cl 3.1(3)). A battle-axe lot needs 12 m × 12 m clear of the laneway.
- The development type. A secondary dwelling is not a dwelling house for the Housing Code (cl 3.1(4)) and has its own pathway. Dual occupancies and multi-dwelling housing sit under the Housing SEPP and the low- and mid-rise reforms, not the Housing Code.
- The design. Height, gross floor area, setbacks, landscaped area, privacy, parking. Complying development has no discretion — a scheme 200 mm over is not a minor variation, it is a DA.
Councils can also vary the state standards for their own area through Schedule 3 of the Codes SEPP, so a figure that holds in one LGA may not hold next door. That is what a site review checks.
What we produce
A lodgement set, complete, so the application isn't stopped for something missing:
- Site plan, floor plans, elevations, sections and a shadow diagram where required
- Notification plans in the format the council asks for
- A statement of environmental effects on a DA, written against the controls that actually apply
- A clause 4.6 written request where a development standard is varied
- The consultant set coordinated — survey, structural, stormwater, BASIX, geotechnical, and any specialist report the site triggers
- Responses to requests for further information, and to submissions
What the documentation costs, and what the whole project costs with the approval stack in it.
Not sure which pathway you're on?
Send us the address. Working that out is the first thing we do, and it's free.