DA approval delays contributing to skyrocketing property prices

Blowouts in development application approval times are robbing council of revenue, stifling investment and pushing property prices even higher. Here’s why council is throwing nearly $1 million at more staff.

Central Coast Council's administrator Rik Hart has approved a budget swap to pump $900,000 into more development assessment staff to drive down a blow out in DA assessment times. 

Central Coast Council hopes to secure five or six new development assessment staff to reign in spiralling DA approval times by taking the money from its materials and services budget and injecting it into the employee costs of the Development Assessment Unit.

The budget swap would only be for two years and be reviewed every 12 months.

Administrator Mr Hart said it would equate to five to six new staff members.

"Hopefully it will be in that range, just depends on the salary line," he said. "At the moment planners are hard to come by so we will probably be paying at the higher end."

Mr Hart said the new staff members would be "sufficient to make a difference" to the current  backlog of development applications.

He described the staff cuts 12 months ago, when the financial crisis hit, as "blunt instruments" to ensure costs were cut down immediately.

"We are now fine tuning and moving money to perform better in those areas," he said.

He said he hoped to employ the new staff as soon as possible and take advantage of the surge of people moving to the coast for cheaper property prices.

PREVIOUSLY FROM DECEMBER 1

The average time it takes to process a development application (DA) has blown out to 77 days, contributing to a “horrible perfect storm” driving property prices through the roof, according to developers.

It comes as a council upgrade to its property and rating systems will mean people will not be able to lodge any applications or construction certificates for almost a fortnight from next Tuesday, December 7, until Monday December 20, which will cause further delays.

Central Coast Council deals with one of the highest number of DAs of any council in NSW with 3175 applications lodged last financial year alone with an estimated construction value of more than $1 billion.

But an exodus of development assessment staff, coupled with an increase in applications being lodged and a recent focus on clearing a backlog of difficult DAs that were more than a year old, has seen a “considerable increase” in processing times, according to former council planning director Scott Cox.

Former director of environment and planning Scott Cox before he finished up with council last week. Photo: supplied.

In two reports to council meetings in September, Mr Cox revealed the extent of the DA blowouts, with the average processing time rising to 77 days for the first six months of the year, which coincided with an increase in applications lodged.

This was up from 71 days in the second half of last year and way up from the 58 day average for the last quarter of the 2019-20 financial year, which is still well above council’s own target of 49 days.

Mr Cox said council lost 10 development and building assessment staff, which accounted for 20 per cent of assessment capacity, during the recent restructuring and council had 30 fewer DA assessment staff than at the time of amalgamation.

DA approval delays have a knock on effect on the housing market. (File image)

Peninsula Chamber of Commerce president Matthew Wales said it was not uncommon for DAs to blow out to 100-150 days.

He said council’s inability to approve DAs in a timely manner was robbing it of a “once in a generational opportunity” to raise revenue through contributions and fees, while at the same time eroding investor confidence.

Mr Wales said DA’s often blew out to 100 days. Picture: Peter Clark

Mr Wales, a town planner and consultant to developers, said the delays also coincided with a national shortage of many building supplies, such as trusses and frames, which compounded the lack of housing stock coming online and forced real estate prices even higher.

Demand for real estate on the coast is also being fuelled by cashed up Sydney buyers who can work from home but can get to Sydney quicker via NorthConnex if they need to and record low interest rates.

“It’s created this horrible perfect storm,” Mr Wales said.

“It just accentuates the boom and bust cycle.”

Central Coast delegate of the Building Designers Association Louise Williams said council’s development assessment staff had gone from 69 at the time of amalgamation down to 36.

Ms Williams said back then if council had 250 new DA’s “on the books” it was considered busy.

Now she said that figure had jumped to 421 new DA’s awaiting processing.

Ms Williams also runs her own company LAW Building Design and said she spent hours on the phone each week explaining to clients why their DA’s had not gone through.

DA’s and construction certificates are an indicator of a regions financial health but delays on the coast are having a widespread knock-on effect. (File photo)

“Applications are taking six months to go through instead of six weeks,” she said.

“As a small business (those applications) are just sitting on our desks. My customers are ringing me asking how their applications are going and I’m having half hour phone calls with people justifying what’s happening inside council, it all adds up.”

Ms Williams said another issue was council had not developed a system to automatically accept DA’s lodged through the NSW Planning Portal, which meant applications were left there “floating in the portal” for six-seven weeks before a council staff member “manually” entered it into three separate council systems for processing.

She said only then did the “clock start ticking” for how long council took to process the application.