Approvals and documentation
Development applications
A merit assessment, not a compliance test. That is the weakness and the strength of it.
A development application is assessed on merit by the council, against its local environmental plan, its development control plan, and the matters in section 4.15 of the Environmental Planning and Assessment Act 1979. Nobody is ticking boxes. A planner forms a view, and that view can be argued with.
Which is the point. Complying development gives you speed on the condition that you design exactly inside the code. A DA takes longer, but it is the only pathway that can carry a variation, a site the code never contemplated, or a proposal that is better than the control it breaches.
Most DAs that fail don't fail on architecture. They fail because the application never engaged with the control it was going to be judged against.
When a DA is the pathway
- The site closes complying development. A heritage item or a heritage conservation area, a flood control lot in most cases, land at landslide risk, foreshore or coastal land.
- The proposal doesn't fit the code. Over the height or floor area, inside a setback, a roof terrace, a garage forward of the building line, a basement over the cap.
- The development type isn't in a code. Most commercial and industrial work, a change of use, subdivision, anything at scale.
- A development standard has to be varied. Only a DA can carry a written request under clause 4.6.
- The lot is short of a minimum. Lot size, width or frontage under the LEP standard — again, clause 4.6.
The statement of environmental effects
The SEE is the document the assessing planner actually reads, and most of them are written as though nobody will. A generic statement that recites the proposal and asserts compliance gives the planner nothing to approve with, and it gives an objector everything.
Ours are written against the specific controls the application will be assessed under — the clause numbers, the numeric standards, and the DCP objectives — and they deal with the non-compliances directly rather than hoping they are not noticed. Where a control is not met, the statement says so, says why the objective behind it is still achieved, and puts the evidence in front of the planner rather than leaving them to find it.
That is not advocacy for its own sake. An assessment officer writes a report that has to justify a recommendation. The easier you make that report to write, the better your odds.
Clause 4.6 variations
Where a proposal exceeds a development standard in the LEP — height, floor space ratio, minimum lot size — clause 4.6 is the mechanism that allows consent anyway. It requires a written request demonstrating that compliance is unreasonable or unnecessary in the circumstances of the case, and that there are sufficient environmental planning grounds to justify the contravention.
Those are two separate tests and applications routinely argue only the first. A request that says the building looks fine and the neighbours won't mind has not addressed environmental planning grounds at all, and a council is entitled to refuse on that basis alone.
The size of the variation matters to who decides it. Larger departures are commonly referred to a local planning panel rather than determined under delegation, which changes both the timeframe and the audience. We tell you which you're facing before the application is lodged.
What we produce
- The full drawing set — site plan, floor plans, elevations, sections, shadow diagrams, and notification plans in the council's required format
- The statement of environmental effects, written against the applicable controls
- A clause 4.6 written request where a development standard is varied
- Waste management plan, and a cost of works report where the council's threshold requires one
- Coordination of survey, structural, stormwater, BASIX, arborist, heritage, bushfire, flood or acoustic input — whichever the site triggers
- Lodgement through the NSW Planning Portal
- Responses to requests for further information and to submissions, which is where a lot of applications quietly die
For a project where the answer isn't obvious yet, a feasibility or pre-DA is the cheaper place to find out. Our DA fees start at $6,800 + GST for a new dwelling and $4,800 + GST for alterations and additions.
How long it takes
Longer than the statutory clock suggests, and the difference is almost entirely requests for further information. A complete application that engages with the controls moves; an incomplete one stops, sometimes for months, while a planner waits for something that should have been in the first submission.
We would rather spend an extra week on the lodgement set than lose two months to an RFI. That is the whole method.
Have a project heading for a DA?
Send us the address. We'll tell you what the controls allow and where the argument will be.