“Copying and printing heavy tomes and delivering them should be a thing of the past in this digital age.
“This will also benefit people in the bush who live hours away from council offices.
“Eventually the portal will connect any type of application to be lodged to any council in NSW. This will provide a uniform and consistent approach across the board.”
Presently, the average time it takes to investigate, prepare, submit, lodge and track a DA manually is up to 10 days, however with the new online lodgement it will take less than half an hour.
Several individual councils currently allow some applications to be lodged electronically, however the new portal will eventually be a one-stop-shop for DAs and complying development certificate submissions.
Some of the changes to the Environmental Planning and Assessment Regulation 2000 that have been proposed to allow online lodgement of applications include:
- standardising the documents required to lodge applications for development
- replacing written consent with legally enforced declarations by applicants that they have permission from land owners to submit a development application
- introducing new requirements for making and exhibiting Development Control Plans and Contribution Plans (financial contributions from developers towards infrastructure costs).