The Development Application Process

You must lodge your application online using the Planning Portal.

To submit online

• Register for a Portal account by visiting planningportal.nsw.gov.au
• After you have registered, you will be able to submit and track your applications online via the Portal.
• See which documents are needed for your type of application by viewing our checklists. These are the same documents that you would normally submit if you were lodging your application by mail or in person. However, only one copy of each document will need to be uploaded.

If you have any questions about the registration process or the Portal, you can contact the Department of Planning, Industry and Environment on 1300 305 695.

We will check your application to make sure we have everything we need to assess your proposal.

• If your application is missing some information or if it’s not clear what the application is asking for, we will return it to you through the Portal with details of what is missing.
• If your application is complete, we will accept it through the Portal.

Depending on the type of application and the notification and exhibition requirements, we might ask you for some paper copies of either part or all of your application documents, but we will only do this after we have started working on your DA.

• If we require more information as we are working on your DA, we will ask you through the Portal.
• We will also send your DA to any government agencies that we need to as part of our assessment through the Portal as well.

After the assessment process is completed, we will notify you about our decision on your application through the Portal. 

You will be sent a fee payment invoice with online and BPay payment options through the Portal.

If you have already received your invoice you can pay online.

Please note: that an application is not lawfully lodged and we will not start working on it until the fees have been paid in full.