If your project qualifies for a fast-track pathway — a NSW Complying Development Certificate, a Victorian VicSmart permit, a South Australian deemed-to-satisfy application — approval typically lands in 10 to 20 days. If it needs a full merit assessment by council, plan on 2 to 6 months from lodgement to determination, and longer again if there are objections, referrals or a design that needs reworking.
That gap is the most important thing to understand about Australian planning approvals: every state publishes a statutory clock, and almost nowhere does that clock match the calendar.
Statutory days are not calendar days
The statutory period is the number of days a council or certifier has to determine your application before you gain a right of appeal. It is not a promise of when you will get an answer, because it can be paused, restarted or extended by agreement.
Victoria is the clearest example. The Planning and Environment Act gives councils 60 statutory days to decide a planning permit, yet councils have been averaging roughly 140 to 155 calendar days for standard applications and considerably longer where objections are lodged. Both numbers are true — the clock simply stops while council waits on further information, while the application is advertised, and while referral authorities respond.
NSW tells the same story. Average determination times fell from about 115 days to 84 days in the year to 31 May 2026, and the Statement of Expectations Order 2026 sets council targets of a 90-day average from 1 July 2026, 80 days from July 2027 and 65 days from July 2028. The statutory deemed-refusal period for an ordinary local DA is 40 days — less than half the actual average.
Approval timeframes by state and territory
The figures below are indicative ranges for typical residential work. Fast-track figures are statutory; full-application figures blend the statutory period with commonly reported real-world elapsed time.
| New South Wales | Fast-track: CDC ~20 days via a private certifier; ~10 days for a Housing Pattern Book design. Full DA: 40-day statutory deemed-refusal period; state average ~84 days, commonly 3–6 months for anything with referrals. |
| Victoria | Fast-track: VicSmart, 10 business days. Full permit: 60 statutory days; real average ~140–155 calendar days, and often well past 200 days where objections are received. |
| Queensland | Fast-track: accepted development needs no application; code assessable has a 35 business-day decision period, commonly 2–4 months in practice. Impact assessable: adds a minimum 15 business-day public notification plus submitter review — commonly 4–8 months. |
| South Australia | Fast-track: deemed-to-satisfy, decided within days of a 5 business-day verification — often 2–4 weeks door to door. Performance assessed: 25 business days statutory, extended by roughly 20–30 business days for referrals and up to 30 for public notification — commonly 2–4 months. |
| Western Australia | No CDC-style certifier pathway; many single houses need no DA at all under the R-Codes. Development approval: 60 days for non-advertised applications, 90 days where advertising or agency referral applies — commonly 3–6 months once holds are counted. |
| Tasmania | Permitted: 28 days, no third-party objection rights. Discretionary: 42 days including a 14-day public advertising period — commonly 2–4 months with a further-information request. |
| Australian Capital Territory | Exempt development needs no approval. Code track: 20 working days. Merit and impact tracks: 30 working days with no representations, 45 working days where representations are received — commonly 2–5 months. |
| Northern Territory | No statewide fast-track certificate. Exhibition is 14 days for most development and 28 days for prescribed development; applications are then listed for the next available Development Consent Authority meeting, roughly six weeks after exhibition opens — commonly 3–5 months. |
Two structural points fall out of that table. First, only NSW lets a private certifier issue the approval, which is why its fast-track pathway is dramatically quicker than anywhere else. Second, the difference between the fast lane and the slow lane is far larger than the difference between states — in most jurisdictions it is weeks versus months. Our CDC vs DA explained guide walks through how that choice is made in NSW, and the same logic applies to VicSmart, code assessable and deemed-to-satisfy elsewhere.
Why it takes longer than the statutory clock
Four things consume nearly all the extra time, and none of them are the council being slow for its own sake.
- Requests for further information (stop-the-clock). Almost every jurisdiction pauses the statutory period from the day an RFI is issued until the day you respond adequately. In WA and Tasmania it is explicit; in Victoria a further-information request made in the first 21 days resets the clock entirely. An RFI you take two months to answer adds two months to nobody's statistics but your own calendar.
- Public notification. Advertising periods are fixed and non-negotiable: 15 business days in Queensland for impact assessable development, 14 days in Tasmania, 14 or 28 days in the NT, and typically 15 business days in SA and WA. Then submissions have to be read, considered and often answered — which is where a single objection can add a month or more.
- Referrals to external agencies. Bushfire-prone land, heritage listings, flood-affected sites, contaminated land, main-road frontages and water-authority connections all trigger referrals to a body the council does not control. NSW data has shown a single state agency referral historically added around 60 days on average, with each additional referral adding more. Referrals run in parallel with nothing.
- Incomplete documents at lodgement. An application that is not properly made does not start the clock at all. Missing survey plans, no shadow diagrams, an out-of-date BASIX or NatHERS certificate, no bushfire attack level assessment, no stormwater plan — each one is a week or three before assessment even begins.
You can predict most of this before you lodge. Overlays are public data: if your site is flood-affected or in a bushfire-prone area, you can find that out in seconds and budget the referral time into your program. Check your property's overlays before you commit to a lodgement date.
How to get approved faster
Timeframes are largely set before you lodge, not after. The levers that actually move the date:
- Design to the fast-track standard exactly, not approximately. Fast-track pathways are pass/fail against numeric controls — setbacks, height, site coverage, lot size, floor area. Exceeding one standard by 200 mm can cost three months. If a design is one small change away from qualifying, make the change.
- Book a pre-lodgement meeting. Most councils offer one for a modest fee, and it is the highest-value hour in the process: you learn which referrals will be triggered, which policy the assessing team is applying and what documents they expect — before you have paid for a full drawing set.
- Lodge complete, not early. A complete application with every plan, certificate and specialist report attached will almost always be determined sooner than one lodged a month earlier and hit with an RFI.
- Answer RFIs in days, not weeks. The clock is stopped while you sit on it. Treat an RFI as the highest-priority item in the project.
- Talk to the neighbours first. Where third-party notification applies, an objection is the most expensive single event in the timeline. A conversation about overshadowing or privacy before you lodge is cheaper than answering a submission afterwards.
- Engage a town planner early for anything non-standard. For heritage, flood, dual occupancy, subdivision or any variation, a planner who knows the council's current position pays for themselves in months saved. Talk to a planner before the design is locked in, not after the refusal.
- Check whether you need approval at all. Plenty of work is exempt — small decks, some sheds, and in several states compliant secondary dwellings. Our granny flat rules by state guide sets out where a secondary dwelling can use the fast lane and where it cannot.
Frequently asked questions
How long does a DA take on average in Australia?
For a straightforward residential development application, budget 2 to 4 months from lodgement to determination, and 4 to 8 months if the proposal needs public notification, agency referrals or design changes. NSW councils averaged about 84 days to determination in the year to 31 May 2026, and Victorian councils have been averaging roughly 140 to 155 calendar days for standard planning permits. These are averages: a simple carport is faster and a multi-dwelling site in a heritage or flood area is slower.
What is the fastest way to get council approval?
Qualify for your state's fast-track pathway by designing exactly to the standards rather than close to them. In NSW that is a Complying Development Certificate, issued by a private certifier in about 20 days, or roughly 10 days for a Housing Pattern Book design. In Victoria it is VicSmart, at 10 business days. In Queensland it is accepted or code assessable development, in South Australia deemed-to-satisfy, in Tasmania a permitted application, and in the ACT the code track. Missing a numeric standard by even a small margin usually pushes you into the full merit pathway, which takes months rather than weeks.
Why has my application been sitting with council for months?
Almost always one of four reasons: the council has issued a request for further information and the statutory clock is paused until you respond; the application is in or waiting on a public notification period; it has been referred to an external agency such as a water authority, heritage body, bushfire authority or roads authority; or the lodged documents were incomplete and assessment has not properly started. Ask the assessing officer which stage the file is at and whether the clock is running or stopped.
What happens if the council does not decide in time?
Every jurisdiction has a remedy, but it is rarely an automatic approval. In NSW and Victoria, failure to decide within the statutory period is treated as a deemed refusal, giving you a right of appeal to the Land and Environment Court or VCAT. In South Australia you can serve a deemed planning consent notice, after which the authority has 10 business days to grant consent, and it can still attach conditions. Queensland, WA, Tasmania, the ACT and the NT all provide appeal or review rights on failure to determine. Appealing restarts a separate process that usually takes longer than simply working with the council, so it is generally a last resort.
The bottom line
Fast-track pathways are fast because they remove discretion — no merit judgement, no objections, no negotiation. Full applications take months because all three are back in play. The most useful thing most owners can do is establish, before the design is finalised, which side of that line their project sits on.
All timeframes here are indicative and vary significantly by council, application type and complexity, and statutory periods change with legislation — Victoria's Planning Amendment (Better Decisions Made Faster) Bill 2025, for example, proposes a tiered 10, 30 and 60 business-day framework. Confirm current timeframes with the relevant council or a qualified planner before relying on them for a project program or finance deadline.
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