November Release: Online Planning Proposals, Major Projects and more

The ePlanning Program regularly deploys system updates and enhancements to our services on the NSW Planning Portal.

The following is an overview of the enhancements and technical releases for the ePlanning Digital Services for the month of November.

Online Planning Proposals Service

There have been several key enhancements to Planning Proposals this month, including:

• Changes to the workflow to ensure there is a smooth transition between Planning Proposals (PP) and the Rezoning Review (RR).
• Traffic light indicators, or RAGs (red, amber, green), have been designed to visually indicate compliance to the Service Level Agreements (SLAs), to ensure that key dates are met within the process.
• An Active Management Plan has been enabled to ensure that case manager users can modify the end date during various stages throughout the process.
• The GIS Spatial viewer will be embedded into the system. GIS users will be able to perform related activities, and others will be able to view the proposal locations within the embedded map.

APIs

Integration API November release contains bug fixes and minor enhancements on existing services, requested by councils and agencies or determined as process and performance improvement initiatives.

Minor non-breaking changes have been applied to existing API services, including Online Development Applications (DAs), State DAs, Certificate of Registration (CR), Concurrence and Referral (CNR), Complying Development Certificate (CDC) Post-Consent Certificate (PCC), Online 10.7 and Section68. BIC APIs have been deployed into production on 12 November, and stakeholders will be communicated with throughout the monthly release cycle.

Major Projects

The Major Projects service has seen numerous enhancements as part of the November 2021 release.

A system enablement of Clause 28 has been created for Seniors Housing, as a result of the consolidation of five existing housing-related SEPPs, effective from 26 November.

There have also been several enhancements to SEARs Rapid Assessment workflow and templates, including UI improvements based on stakeholder feedback, alignment of SSD Mod questions in line with the regulation clause 115, and amendments to the landowner’s consent content in SSI, SSD and Mods applications.

Finally, there have been enhancements to invoice details and the addition of a notification to acknowledge the payment of fees.

eConstruction

Enhancements have been made to Occupation Certificate digital workflow within the Online Post Consent Certificate Service in order to bring them in-line with the Design and Building Practitioners Act 2020. These changes will be applicable for Class 2 developments only.

Various improvements have been made to the Practitioners’ ePlanning registration, with or without the NSW Fair Trading registration numbers. The system will also allow new and existing users to modify their practitioner registration number.

Implementation of Design and Building Practitioners Regulation 2021 Clause 13, related to exemptions, will allow applicants to perform a self-assessment as to whether their development is exempt from DBP requirements, and gain validation for certifiers. If the certifier disagrees with the self-assessment, the workflow will enable the applicant the opportunity to comply with these requirements.

Short Term Rental Accommodation (STRA)

Through consistent engagement with booking platforms and other key stakeholders, significant changes have been made within the STRA Registration Portal to enable ePlanning and users to comply with the required legislation and improve user experience.

Over 30,000 properties have now been registered, and the STRA website is frequently updated with relevant information, tools and FAQs.

Based on user-acceptance testing (UAT) feedback, administrative functions have been built between the STRA register and the Department of Customer Service Portal to exclude properties or hosts, including the ability to exclude the host on future dates and updating the address field in the DCS portal so that the field can be searched on the STRA database.

Special Activation Precinct (SAP)

Several developments have been made within SAP. Applicants are now able to:

• Apply for a modification of an Activation Precinct Certificate (APC) application and link this to their original case.
• Complete, review and submit a modification request to the Regional Growth NSW Development Corporation (RGDC) to seek an Activation Precinct Certificate.
• Generate a PDF version of the evaluation and certificate outcome
• Provide additional information voluntarily
• Respond to requests for additional information by the GCDC user

RGDC is now able to:

• Process a ‘request to modify’ application and upload the associated document types based on outcomes
• Raise a referral request to applicable agencies and councils.

Detailed release notes for these services are available in the Knowledge Management section of the Portal.