Too many DA’s for Council

Potentially 10,000 jobs tied up in outstanding DA’s

WHAT’S THE DIFFERENCE between a 10 storey building and a swimming pool?

Or, what is the difference between a complex project and a simple one?

According to Central Coast Council there is no difference at all.

The development assessment process does not differentiate between a swimming pool, a renovation or a garage and a major project such as a high-rise residential building, a factory or anything in between.

The fact is that Council’s Planning Director, Dr Alice Howe, appointed only a few months ago, is living with the legacy of a failed amalgamation process, a shortage of skilled staff, large numbers of development applications (including for minor projects such as swimming pools and garages) commensurate with the second largest council in NSW, and a new digital State Government Planning Portal designed to speed up the process that is not working. It can take six weeks between lodging a DA on the Portal, to when a DA is lodged in Council’s system. This enables Council to fudge the numbers when it comes to reporting how efficient or otherwise that they may be.

The number of DA’s in Council’s system at the end of July 2022 was 980 and continues to increase with no apparent plan in sight to get it down. The number of DA’s Determined is not keeping up with applications entering the system, indicating that the situation is worsening.

Some builders say they are allowing twelve months to get a DA.

It is no secret that a toxic culture within Council, since amalgamation, has seen numerous planning staff leave with no one applying to replacement them. That may be changing but the damage has been done and no one sees this council as a longterm career.

In respect to rezonings, in December 2021, the NSW Dept of Planning introduced new guidelines which now include benchmark assessment timeframes. All parties want speedier rezoning assessments, but the ‘double edged sword’ is that Council can no longer entertain negotiations with proponents, so that if the application is deficient in any measure it will be returned so as not to impact on their KPI‘s. (CCBR understands that a high rate of rezonings are being rejected over the past months)

Council has taken to rejecting rezoning before they enter the system, on the basis that they don’t tick all the boxes even though such issues may be insignificant.

The cost to the proponent can be significant in terms of extra, and in many cases unnecessary, fees and lost time. Having regard to all challenges currently facing Council, the key message to applicants is having pre-lodgement meetings where required, sticking within prescriptive requirements, and not pushing for any variations. In addition, they need to ensure all requested documentation from Council is included as part of the application package, otherwise the applicant will face the risk of rejection.

Applicants should expect cost shifting to the front end of the process to work otherwise may have been deferred to a later stage in the process.

It is a well-known fact that there is a desperate housing shortage across the region but there appears to be no sense of urgency to rectify the situation.

Added to this issue is the ‘silo’ system that works within councils whereby various departments must give their sign-off as part of the process. If a staff member is handling a particular matter and goes on holidays or gets sick that matter will be shelved until he returns. Additionally, quite often each department is working at cross purposes to the other.

Biodiversity is also a major issue with council taking a hard-line approach to protect individual species such as Tasmania’s Swift Parrot and the Squirrel Glider just to name two. And then there are so called threatened species such as Somersby Mint Bush, the Warnervale Orchid and other obscure species that are being introduced to totally stop a development.

Talking to people in the industry; builders, swimming pool builders and other trades, the situation is causing untold financial stress as work banks up while approvals are taking around six months and more in many cases.

When it comes to residential and industrial sub-divisions it can take up to three years with council making unreasonable demands.

As one leading developer told CCBR, “it is total madness, we have one project where we lodged a DA in late 2021 and we are still waiting for the first Request for Information. In other LGA’s councils respond immediately. We find it is easier to do business and invest in other regions.”

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