Roadmap of the NSW Planning Portal

These minor enhancements have been identified by users of the digital service and include visibility rules around dynamic text are consistent, i.e. the questions asked and information required is minimised to only those BASIX categories relevant to that customer’s application.

These enhancements will bring the SSD digital service, i.e. major projects, in line with the development assessment (DA) digital service so that the relevant information required under the Housing SEPP changes implemented in late 2023 are captured.

Minor enhancements will be made to the BASIX digital service to improve the user interface including updating the calculation engine to more accurately reflect development requirements in the BASIX certificate.

In response to ICAC’s Dasha report, Policy team has communicated to councils about Estimates Development Cost reforms that will come into effect on 4 March 2024. 

As part of these reforms, Estimated development cost (EDC) will be used for calculating fees payable for local, regional and state significant development, and for determining planning approval pathways. 

EDC will replace CIV (capital investment value) where applicable on the Planning Portal and Major Projects Portal. The new definition will not increase application fees payable for development.

New data field on post consent certificates. APIs with Better Regulations register to validate the Automatic Mutual Recognition (AMR) details to now be included in the NSW Planning Portal. This will facilitate interstate license participants or holders to register on the NSW Planning Portal.

Enhancement to extend functionality of MyHome Planner on the NSW Planning Portal to include information on modifications and alterations and knockdown rebuild projects

This new tool on the NSW Planning Portal will enable applicants for farm developments to identify pre-requisites for their projects depending on the location and the proposed development.

New APIs for councils to receive the Contributions related information for Development Applications and Consent Development Certificates into their respective council systems. Councils that use these new APIs will not have to login to the NSW Planning Portal to calculate and verify contribution rates and charges

Enhancements to digital services in response to stakeholder feedback will be released. 

• Integration to the Automatic Mutual Recognition Scheme (AMR) for the eConstruction program which allows specific workers from other states to work in NSW.
• API updates

This release will transition certifier information from “Certability” within Fair Trading to the NSW Planning Portal.  This benefits the users by eliminating duplication of effort for certifiers by entering all information in a single location.

The March API roll-out will further enhance the digital integration of the council’s IT systems with the NSW Planning Portal Online DA Version 2 (V2)

This release includes the migration of digital maps for employment zones into digital environmental planning instruments.

Milestone 1 for councils who received the grant to achieve digital integration of the council’s IT systems with the NSW Planning Portal Online DA Version 2 (V2) APIs by 31 March 2023. 

A new digital workflow for Councils to develop, exhibit and publish their Contributions Plans on the NSW Planning Portal.

This release enables developers of Class 2 buildings to stage their construction schedules and to request their certifiers to prepare multiple construction and occupational certificates from within the NSW Planning Portal.

The delivery of BASIX version 3 digital solution will support the addition of BASIX requirements for alterations and additions to existing buildings. This will allow designers to assess their renovations within the BASIX tool. 

This enhancement brings the sandbox experience into production and provides the functionality to standardise letters for Approval, Concept Approval, Deferred Approval, Modification, Refusal and Review Letter stages.  It also includes refinements to support the use of standard conditions during modification of DA applications and allows Councils to incorporate their own logo in Notice of Determination correspondence.

Enhancements to digital services in response to stakeholder feedback will be released. 

The NSW Planning Portal will host a pre-development application (pre-DA) assist tool and interactive building guide developed through collaboration with the Life Journeys Program (Program) at the Department of Customer Service (DCS). 

This program will provide our customers contemplating the building of a home or major renovations with early information about the information and requirements for their potential application.  It will assist and guide them in obtaining pertinent pre-development application information about that planning approvals process.  

Feedback received as part of the initial phase has influenced the benefits of the Program, which also align with those of the NSW Planning Portal, specifically, reduced assessment timeframes; increased transparency of government requirements, such as council and planning laws or building standards, by providing a single source of truth of trusted information relevant to a particular situation; increased confidence because customers will know what to expect so they can plan and budget appropriately; increased productivity by consent authorities due to better informed submissions; and increased investment in NSW resulting from increased productivity and confidence.

Enhancements to digital services in response to stakeholder feedback will be released. 

The delivery of BASIX version 4 digital solution will support do-it-yourself (DIY) projects. A key benefit of this release is its alignment with the new BASIX standards commencing 1 October 2023.

Milestone 2 for councils who received the grant to achieve digital integration of the council’s IT systems with the following NSW Planning Portal integration APIs by 31 December 2023: online Certificate Registration Service API V1; online Post Consent Certificate Service API V1; online CDC Service API V1; and online Building Information Certificate (BIC) Application Service API V1.

Enhancements to digital services in response to stakeholder feedback will be released. 

Through a joint initiative, the majority (117) of councils were released from their monthly manual reporting requirements to the ABS.  This was made possible due to the confidence that the ABS has in the data provided by the Department via the terms of the MOU between the agencies.  

A new digital service for Section 3.22 planning proposals was released providing a simple process to initiate and finalise these housekeeping amendments.

Initiative 2 has been deployed to enable the achievement of the Faster Assessments Program to reduce assessment timeframes across the NSW planning system over the next three years.  Important structural and process changes that were required included the implementation of technology improvements to improve tracking and data availability to the NSW Planning Portal for the Planning Panel Secretariat.

This new process within the Development Assessment digital service implements the new Moorebank Intermodal Precinct State Environment Planning Policy SEPP requires proponents to obtain a Traffic Certificate from the Planning Secretary for certain developments.

A new digital services to enable submission of applications for Section 122 (Temporary regulation of traffic) and Section 144 (Permits for road events) of Roads Act 1993 and routing these applications to respective councils and agencies was released. Councils and State agencies will have the ability to process and determine these applications using the NSW Planning Portal.

This release also provides the ability to decouple Roads Act services (sections 125, 138, 144 and 122), ability to apply to multiple Roads Act sections in the same submission and enablement of City of Sydney spatial layers where Place Management NSW and Infrastructure NSW agencies are the road authority.

In response to council feedback, changes have been made to allow customised email addresses to be used for agency clauses, in addition to generic agency email addresses; a new Concurrence and Referral type ‘Notification/Information’ has been added and does not have an associated clock; and the consent authority can now request that an agency reconsider rejected clauses for re-assessment.

In response to customer feedback and input a number of enhancements were made to the digital services including updates to notifications for

• Post-Consent Certificate (PCC) and Complying Development Certificate (CDC);
• increasing character limitations for Construction Certificate (CC) submissions;
• the addition of notifications for voluntary provisioning information in Certificate Registrations and Development Application (DA) State;
• amending ‘request for additional information’ notifications for applicants within Roads Act, DA State and Building Information Certificate (BIC);
• and the addition of a local action option called ‘notice of critical stage inspection’ for applicants to be notified within the Portal for PCC.

Enhancement to existing digital services including development assessments, complying development certificates, post-consent certificates, concurrence and referrals, certificate registration and building information certificate services.  Enhancements to development applications and post-consent certificate API services were also made to integrate with Cadastre NSW to enable cadastre information to be automatically provided to Cadastre NSW.

Release of additional functionality in preparation for the regulations mandate to commence 1 August 2022, for all Councils. This release enhances the functionality available to standardise letters for Approval, Concept Approval, Deferred Approval, Modification, Refusal and Review Letter stages

This release also includes a number of refinements to support the use of standard conditions during modification of DA applications and allows Councils to incorporate their own logo in Notice of Determination correspondence.

The Pre-DA Assist Tool pilot program provides applicants, certifiers and designers with an opportunity to check if their development designs are compliant with the housing code before lodging their application.

The tool will generate a report which will be available to certifiers when they assess the CDC application. The program is being piloted for up to 12 months and is applicable to all dwelling house applications within Georges River and Parramatta council areas.

Modifications to the Development Application (Council and State) and Complying Development Certificate digital services were required to align the Portal with the new Housing State Environmental Planning Policy (Housing SEPP) 2021.

We are in the development phase of releasing the BASIX tool to allow users to apply for, submit payments and retrieve their BASIX certificate

The new Western Sydney Aerotropolis Special Infrastructure Contribution (SIC) Policy implementation allows applicants and developers to submit their SIC applications for assessment.

Key features include the ability for users to create an application for the Western Sydney Aerotropolis SIC; implementation of the SIC calculator; and real-time GIS integration allowing users to identify their Aerotropolis SIC region.

The new application allows registrants to register their property via the ePlanning Digital Service. 

A significant enhancement to this existing digital service included additional KPI specific data for planners and proponents; a new standalone engagement workflow to allow compliance officers to create record of meetings; and the ability to add days to the review of certain modifications.

The new State Design Review Panel (SDRP) digital service will relieve the team of labour intensive administrative tasks and digitally transform their business processes.

As a new digital service, the first release of this project provides a digital workflow for an applicant to be able to submit a Building Information Certificate to council for assessment and determination through the NSW Planning Portal.

The Department and the Office of the Building Commissioner collaborated to implement digital workflows to comply with regulatory requirements of the Design and Building Practitioner Act 2020. These changes affect building works on Class 2 residential buildings in NSW and impact the Online Complying Development Certificate Service and Online Construction Certificate Service.

The public can now access all current/in-force planning information (controls) related to their property or local government area including the ability to view historical planning information (controls).  This release also provides a  a key enabler for the implementation of a digital environmental planning instruments (EPIs). 

The changes to this digital service implement the amendments to the Environmental Planning and Assessment Regulation 2000.  This regulatory change requires councils and other planning authorities to publish online a suite of documents related to the infrastructure contributions received via development contributions plans and planning agreements. 

A workflow to allow Councils to submit their Infrastructure Contributions to the department and made publicly available on the NSW Planning Portal site

Key enhancements to this digital service include a workflow to facilitate Rezoning Reviews (RR); traffic light indicators (red, amber, green) have been designed to visually indicate compliance to the Service Level Agreements (SLAs), the Active Management Plan has been enabled to ensure that case manager can modify the key dates associated with timeframe reduction KPIs; and the embedding of the NSW Spatial Viewer to identify the location of the site.

Built in collaboration with the Office of the Building Commissioner, Project Remediate is a new digital service. It enables developers who have registered for removal of combustible cladding from Class 2 buildings, either through a DCO or DA/CDC to initiate a case in the NSW Planning Portal, upload their compliance documents and declare and lodge required documentation to receive their Remedial Assurance Certificate.

The COVID-19 Legislation Amendment (Emergency Measures) Bill 2020 has removed the requirement for councils and other consent authorities to display physical copies of some documents so long as they are displayed on the NSW Planning Portal 

Customer and council application process for Planning Proposals

End to end building approval solution we are creating digital work flow for Occupation Certificates(OC).

End to end building approval solution and digital work flow for Construction Certificates (CC)

Provides a work flow for Special Infrastructure Contributions (SIC) assessments

Release of the Part 5 application on the NSW Planning Portal. 

Further enhancements to the NSW Planning Portal Spatial Viewer with Aboriginal land data review and security layer for classified data sets.

A new online service for Planning Certificates that enable customers to use their online 10.7 application to start either a Development Application (DA) or a Complying Development Certificate (CDC) Application. 

Following reforms to the EP&A Act, the Secretary can now intervene on behalf of agencies where there is conflicting advice between or unnecessary delays. This release enables all councils to request Secretary's Intervention online.

A new online application for applicants and councils to submit rezoning reviews via the NSW Planning Portal.

An online service made available for Section 68, 125 and 138 applications on the NSW Planning Portal.

Integration of the Online DA service with the Online Concurrence and Referral service. It enables councils using both to request State agency advice from one dashboard.

The ability was initiated for users to log into the NSW Planning Portal using their ServiceNSW credentials.  

This increased the convenience of accessing and the population served of the NSW Planning Portal.

The Online Concurrence and Referral (C&R) service enables councils to seek State agency advice on DAs via the NSW Planning Portal. Initial nine councils and 24 State agencies.

The integration of the IPC with the NSW Planning Portal enabled the ability for councils and the Department to remain in the Portal and refer planning approvals within the digital service.  Documents from the original case are automatically made available to the IPC for assessment.

An enhanced and more simplified Planning Panels Secretariat work flow was released. This includes the creation of a new Planning Panel website and enables all councils to register DAs with the Panel.

End to end building approval solution and digital work flow for Subdivision Certificates (SC).

Release of the NSW Planning Portal Spatial Viewer, a digital mapping service showing how planning instrument mapping applies across NSW

ePlanning has developed a series of APIs to allow councils to integrate their systems with the Department.

Integration of the Online DA service with the Online Concurrence and Referral service. It enables councils using both to request State agency advice from one dashboard.

Provides work flow and new register for State Planning Agreements (SVPA).

Enhancement of the NSW Planning Portal to enhance user experience and upgrades to the Drupal platform.

Release of an API (Application Programming Interface) to allow integration State agency IT systems with online concurrence and referral service.

This release provided enhancements to the Online CDC service and was made available to an additional four councils.

The EP&A Regulation requires building owners with external combustible cladding to register their building. This release enables them to register online.

The Online Development Application (DA)service enables the submission, tracking and determination of DAs via the NSW Planning Portal. Initial release to 12 councils.

Claim a Free Tree tool to encourage the expansion of green canopy in greenfield areas of Western Sydney. Free trees are available to certain CDC approved developments.

This release provided enhancements to the Online CDC service and was made available to an additional four councils.