Tweed Shire Council push to clear development application backlog

The housing boom in the Tweed has stalled with council scrambling to clear a backlog of applications to get things moving again. Here’s what’s happening.

More housing is desperately needed in the Tweed. Picture: File.

A Northern Rivers council under pressure to push development applications through in a state housing crisis has blamed excessive NSW government administration and a huge backlog from 2022.

Denise Galle, Tweed Shire Council’s director of planning and regulation, said the backlog formed due partially to the Covid-19 pandemic and resulting border closures, as well as a general construction boom in the highly sought-after region.

Several major landowners such as Leda, Gales and Intrapac pushing to advance approval processes reharding their sites were another factor.

The trio’s developments, including Leda’s massive Kings Forest at Kingscliff, will result in more than 10,000 new homes in the Tweed, according to Ms Galle.

A backlog of development applications is hampering efforts to get more housing underway in the Tweed.

Significant council technical input had also been required for major government projects including the new Tweed Valley Hospital at Cudgen, school upgrades, senior living developments and quarries.

An unprecedented number of new planning policies and amendments from the Department of Planning and in the new State Planning Portal added more hoops to jump through, according to council.

Ms Galle said council has focused on moving newer applications smoothly through the system, while clearing the backlog.

Increased scrutiny on applications, subject to strict quality conditions, have been implemented to avoid further delays.

“The median time to assess a house in the past 12 months is 75 days (across 317 applications),” Ms Galle said.

”While the median time to assess a pool in the past 12 months has been 49 days (across 115 applications).”

Ms Galle said there had beeen “a great improvement” in tackling delayed development paperwork and there had been “improvements to (council’s) DA assessment times”.

Older development applications are being seen to as quickly as possible, the council states.

In November 2022, Tweed Shire Council had 540 outstanding appplications in the system. That has been reduced to 284 - a 47 per cent drop.

Ms Galle said: “In December 2023, there were 152 applications older than 180 days in the system.”

“Since this time we have deliberately coordinated our staff to tackle these outstanding DAs, with 114 of these applications now determined, leaving 38 of the original older applications still being worked through,” she said.

“However, over this time an additional 63 applications have crept back over the 180-day threshold, meaning we still have 101 outstanding applications over this mark.”

A concerted effort to drive down the backlog of development applications in the Tweed has seen a 47% reduction in the number of outstanding applications in the system.

Ms Galle said the council would work hard to meet the new order recently imposed by the government for councils across the state to assess DAs within 115 days.

“If we had just calculated the average assessment time for all DA’s lodged and determined in 2023-24, our average assessment time would have been 93 days – well below the 115 days – but determining older applications over the past 12 months has blown that statistic out to 189 days,” she said.

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