The Property Council of Australia is urging the NSW government to tackle significant delays in the processing of development applications (DAs) by local councils.
Despite several months of government scrutiny, the latest performance report revealed that only 54% of councils in NSW are meeting their residential development assessment targets.
Katie Stevenson (pictured above), executive director of Property Council NSW, highlighted the troubling backlog in council approvals, with around 8,500 development applications and certificate requests currently pending in Sydney.
“With reports today that Sydney councils are sitting on 8,500 unresolved development applications and requests for development certificates, there’s no more room for excuses,” Stevenson said.
The Property Council executive pointed to recent data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS), which showed a 15% decline in total dwelling approvals in NSW between August and September, marking the worst month since January 2023.
According to Stevenson, these figures underscore the need for a stronger response from the NSW Government to address the performance gaps in council processing.
The NSW government introduced performance improvement orders (PIOs) earlier this year as a measure to improve council performance on development applications.
However, Stevenson criticised the lack of enforcement, saying, “Penalties are pointless if you’re not prepared to use them.”
She stressed that, despite declining approval rates in many councils, PIOs have yet to be applied even once.
The Property Council has been calling for stronger government intervention, suggesting that councils with consistently poor performance be given a “red card.”
Even when approvals are granted, further obstacles remain. Recent KPMG data indicated that more than 12,000 homes approved in Sydney remain stalled due to financial and construction challenges, an increase of nearly 18% from the previous year.
Stevenson said that rising costs and financial strain make many projects unfeasible, with families, workers, and businesses bearing the brunt of these delays, which are worsening Sydney’s housing affordability crisis.
Stevenson urged the Minns government to act decisively before the year’s end to prevent a typical holiday slowdown in activity.
“If the Minns government means business when it comes to housing, we need to see action now,” she said, emphasising that any further delay would only deepen the housing challenges in NSW.
In June, the NSW government introduced league tables and a statement of expectations to rank councils based on their development application processing times.
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