In New South Wales, Councils technically have 40 days to decide an ordinary development application, 60 days for designated or integrated development, and 90 days for State significant development. Victoria’s equivalent is 60 statutory days. Queensland runs on a 35 business day decision period. Very few commercial applications are decided inside those periods, because the clock stops each time the application is sitting back with the applicant.
If you have signed a lease and set a trading date, how long a DA (Development Application) takes to get approved is the number the whole programme depends on. The answer has two parts: the statutory period, which is fixed and published, and the elapsed time, which is mostly decided by how complete the application was on the day it was lodged.
This post covers both, state by state, and separates the weeks you can control from the ones you cannot.
What is the statutory assessment period for a DA in New South Wales?
Forty days for ordinary development. The NSW Land and Environment Court sets out that a Development Application is taken to have been refused if it has not been determined after 40 days for ordinary development, 60 days for designated or integrated development, and 90 days for State significant development. That window is the technical assessment period. It is a legal deadline attached to your appeal rights, not a service promise about when the consent will land in your inbox.
NSW Planning puts the real-world figure higher, citing an average determination time for a Development Application of 70 days when comparing it with the 20-day Complying Development pathway.
Elapsed time is the number commercial applicants care about, and it is rarely the same as the statutory period. A fit-out or change-of-use DA lodged with a complete planning case, the consultant reports the use type triggers, and any variations already justified in writing can be determined close to the statutory period. The same proposal lodged without an acoustic report, or with a parking shortfall nobody has addressed, attracts a Request for Further Information and picks up every week spent answering it. Front-loading that work is the point of Development Application services.
Four things that stop the assessment clock
Requests for Further Information is the main one. In New South Wales the assessment clock pauses while the consent authority waits on information it has formally asked you for, so a fortnight spent chasing an engineer is a fortnight added to your determination date and nothing off Council’s deadline.
Four events routinely stretch the elapsed timeline on a commercial application:
- A Request for Further Information. Each round takes the application off Council’s desk and puts it back on yours, and the days spent there are dead time on your programme.
- Public Notification. Where the proposal has to be notified or advertised, the exhibition period and the assessment of any submissions received both sit inside the calendar.
- Referrals to other authorities. Traffic, water, fire and heritage bodies each run their own queues.
- Integrated development and concurrence. Where another agency’s approval is a precondition, the assessment period is longer from the outset, at 60 days rather than 40.
None of these are unusual. What separates a fast approval from a slow one is how many of them were anticipated before lodgement rather than discovered after it.
How long does a Planning Permit take in Victoria?
Sixty statutory days. Planning Victoria’s guidance confirms that if Council fails to decide a Planning Permit application within 60 statutory days, the applicant can apply to VCAT for a review. Those 60 days are calculated under Regulation 32 of the Planning and Environment Regulations 2015, not counted off a calendar from lodgement.
Two Victorian features change the shape of a commercial timeline. Applications that qualify for VicSmart run on a much shorter assessment track.
Applications that attract objections cannot go straight to a Planning Permit:
- Council issues a Notice of Decision instead
- an objector has 28 days to lodge a review with VCAT
- the Planning Permit is issued only once that window closes without a challenge.
Referral authorities have 28 days to respond, and Planning Permits commonly expire two years from issue.
Queensland decision periods under the Development Assessment Rules
Thirty-five business days for the decision. Queensland’s process is set out in the Development Assessment Rules made under the Planning Act 2016, which give the assessment manager a 35 business day decision period covering both Code and Impact Assessable applications.
That figure sits at the end of a longer sequence. The application stage has its own confirmation period of 10 business days, during which the assessment manager decides whether the application is properly made. An information request, referrals and, for Impact Assessable proposals, Public Notification all sit between lodgement and the decision period starting. A material change of use for a gym, a café or a medical tenancy carries real referral triggers, so the 35 business days is the last leg rather than the whole trip.
What happens if Council does not decide in time?
The application is taken to have been Refused, and your appeal rights open. In New South Wales this is called a “Deemed Refusal”. Once the assessment period passes without a determination, you are treated as having been Refused and can commence proceedings in the Land and Environment Court, generally within six months of that date. Victoria has an equivalent review for failure to determine. Queensland has its own remedies under the Planning Act 2016.
Opening an appeal right is not the same as using it. Most applicants keep working with the assessing officer, because a determination is usually closer than a hearing date. The value of knowing the deadline comes down to timing. It tells you when to escalate and when to stop waiting.
The delays you can control
More of the elapsed time is controllable than most applicants assume, because the largest single variable sits before lodgement rather than inside council. The statutory periods, the notification process and the referral queues are fixed. What you lodge, and how fast you answer what is asked, are not.
| Source of delay | Controllable? | What shortens it |
| Quality and completeness of the application at lodgement | Yes | Constraints identified before the design is fixed; reports commissioned early |
| Rounds of further information | Yes | Answering the officer’s likely questions inside the application |
| Time you take to respond to an information request | Yes | Consultants already engaged and briefed rather than found afterwards |
| Variations to development standards | Yes | Written justification lodged with the application, not after a refusal signal |
| Statutory assessment period | No | Nothing; it is set by the Regulations |
| Public notification and submissions | No | Realistic neighbour and amenity responses reduce the number of objections |
| Referral and concurrence agency queues | No | Referring early and correctly the first time |
| Council workload and officer allocation | No | Nothing directly, though pre-lodgement contact helps |
Fit-out and change-of-use applications across New South Wales, Victoria and Queensland are routine work for Prestige Town Planning, and the pattern is consistent. The applications that land on time are the ones where the hard questions were answered before lodgement. If your project is still at design stage, that is the cheapest point to test the timeline, and it is what planning advice and strategy is for.
Consent is not permission to build!
In New South Wales the consent is followed by a Construction Certificate before work physically commences, and an Occupation Certificate before the space can be occupied. Conditions attached to the consent have to be discharged along the way, and some require documents from consultants you may not have engaged yet.
For a commercial operator this is the gap that wrecks trading dates. The DA (Development Application) timeline gets planned carefully and certification gets treated as paperwork, when it carries its own lead times and its own dependencies on the fit-out drawings. Construction Certification Management exists because that handover is where programmes quietly slip.
Frequently asked questions
Does the clock start the day I lodge?
Not necessarily. NSW Planning states the assessment clock starts once you have provided enough information and paid the required fees. If council finds it needs more, the clock stops again until you supply it.
Does a bigger project always take longer?
Not automatically. Complexity drives time more than scale. A small change of use on a constrained tenancy with acoustic and parking issues can take longer than a larger application on a straightforward site.
Can you pay council to fast-track a DA (Development Application)?
No. Some Councils offer paid pre-lodgement meetings, and Queensland Councils run their own fast-track streams for qualifying applications, however, the assessment periods themselves are set by Regulations and cannot be bought down.
What is the fastest approval pathway available?
Where a proposal meets the standards, Complying Development in New South Wales is a certificate-based pathway rather than a merit-based assessment, and Victoria’s VicSmart runs on a much shorter track. Both depend on meeting the criteria exactly.
When should you lodge if you have a trading date to hit?
Start at the trading date, subtract certification, then the assessment period, then consultant lead times, then add the information request you hope not to get. The date you land on is your lodgement date, and it is almost always earlier than operators expect.
Prestige Town Planning prepares and manages Development Applications for business fit-outs, change of use and signage nationally, from Suite 4, 101 Victoria Street, East Gosford.
Send us the site address, the intended use and the date you want to open, and we will tell you whether that date is achievable before you spend anything on documents. Talk to a planner about your timeline or call (02) 430 87305.