New Environmental Planning & Assessment Regulation: DA Processing to take Longer?

The draft Environmental Planning and Assessment Regulation 2010, currently on exhibition until 5 November (Draft Regulation), proposes some key changes to the NSW development assessment regime.

Importantly for developers, it proposes to change the test for physical commencement of works, so that surveys alone would not be enough to physically commence a development consent. As a consequence developers acting on consents would need to ensure additional work is undertaken (as a bare minimum) to ensure consents do not lapse.

Deemed refusal periods and stop the clock periods for development applications are also proposed to change.

Some key aspects of proposed changes are discussed below.