Tweed Shire Council staff say they’re catching up on and reducing the number of outstanding development applications [DAs] lodged locally.
DAs are officially considered ‘outstanding’ once 180 days have passed since submission.
The council has compared figures to as far back as November 2022, when 540 outstanding DAs were recorded.
Some eighteen months later, the backlog has almost halved to 284, thanks to what Tweed Shire Council Director of Planning and Regulation Denise Galle says has been a coordinated and targeted staff effort.
But a closer look at figures released in a recent council media statement suggests staff are still struggling to keep up, thanks to relentless desire for new building projects and upgrades across the shire.
Developers cashing in on housing crisis add to staff pressure
More than a hundred outstanding DAs are recorded in the Tweed Shire as of July 2024, with Ms Galle saying 63 of them entered the ‘outstanding’ 180-day-plus category in the past nine months.
The 63 newly categorised ‘outstanding’ DAs compares to 114 determined in the same period but adds to 38 already considered ‘outstanding’ as of November last year.
‘We still have 101 outstanding applications,’ Ms Galle is quoted as saying.
Ms Galle says the backlog is the result of several factors, including the COVID-19 pandemic, border closures and associated construction boom in the Tweed shire.
Several major landowners such as Leda, Gales and Intrapac are also reportedly adding to staff pressure with requests to advance approval processes on their sites.
Council staff say the major developments in question represent more than 10,000 potential new homes.
Much of the big developer-owned land in the shire has been effectively land-banked for years, even decades, despite initial approvals for housing.
NSW government piles planning pressures on councils
Ms Galle says major state projects including the new Tweed Valley Hospital, school upgrades, senior living developments and quarries have also required ‘significant technical input’ from council staff.
‘The NSW Department of Planning introduced the new State Planning Portal in July 2021, creating a significant administrative load on councils,’ the council media release reads.
At the same time, the council says, an ‘unprecedented number of new planning policies and amendments to the system’ was introduced, ‘placing additional burden on Council’s resources’.
The comments come partly in response to another new state government rule for council DA processing time.
Planning minister Paul Scully last week said local governments must assess new DAs within 115 days.
Council staff getting strict on DA ‘quality’
Newer Tweed Shire Council DAs are said to be ‘moving more smoothly through the system’.
‘The median time to assess a house in the past twelve months is 75 days,’ Ms Galle says, ‘while the median time to assess a pool in the past 12 months has been 49 days’.
The figures come in relation to 317 house DAs received in the same period and 115 pool DAs.
‘Staff have also been stricter on DA lodgements to improve the quality of applications being lodged so as not to clog up the system.’ Ms Galle says.
Ms Galle says if Tweed Shire Council staff had calculated the average assessment time for all DA’s lodged and determined in 2023-24 their average assessment time would have been 93 days.
‘But determining older applications over the past 12 months has blown that statistic out to 189 days,’ she says.
Tweed Shire Council DAs can be tracked via tweed.nsw.gov.au/development-applications.
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