The questions homeowners actually ask.

There are three, and which one applies is decided by your property, not by what you want to build.

Exempt development needs no approval at all — small, low-impact work that meets every one of a set of pre-set standards. Complying development (a CDC) is checked against fixed criteria and certified, without council forming a judgement, and it is the fastest pathway when a proposal qualifies. A Development Application (a DA) is assessed on its merits by council, and is required when a proposal needs judgement rather than a checklist — a change of use, or anything that departs from the standards.

The deciding factors are the zone, the planning controls that apply to the land, and the site's constraints — heritage, flood, bushfire, easements, trees, sewer. Two identical proposals on two neighbouring streets can sit on different pathways.

Establishing which one applies to your site is exactly what a Planning Assessment does, and it is worth doing before you pay anyone to draw anything.

It depends on the pathway, and the honest answer is that the part we control is not the part that takes the time.

A CDC is certified against fixed criteria and is materially faster than a DA, because nobody is forming a judgement — the proposal either meets the standards or it does not.

A DA is assessed on its merits. The assessment clock can be stopped when council requests additional information, and it stops again for referrals to other agencies and for public notification. That is where applications lose months: not in assessment, but in going back and forth over information that could have been supplied at lodgement.

This is the single biggest thing good documentation changes. An application that arrives answering council's questions is assessed. One that arrives incomplete is negotiated.

Sometimes — but far less often than people assume, and the cost of being wrong is high.

Some minor work is exempt development and genuinely needs no approval, provided it meets every applicable standard. Missing one of them means the work is not exempt, and "mostly complies" is not a category.

Building without an approval you needed can result in enforcement action, orders to modify or remove the work, and penalties. It also surfaces later at the worst possible time: unapproved work routinely derails a sale, a refinance or an insurance claim, because the paperwork does not match what is on the ground.

Before you start, confirm which pathway applies rather than assuming none does. That check is inexpensive compared with rectifying work already built.

Usually, yes. Work built without consent is not beyond fixing.

In many cases existing work can be documented and approved retrospectively. The question is whether what already exists can be shown to satisfy the controls that apply to it — and where it falls short, whether design amendments can bring it into line.

That is ordinary work for this practice rather than an unusual request, and it is one of the project types on our record. Tell us early and tell us everything; a retrospective matter gets harder when the documentation has to be corrected halfway through.

Yes — extensions, alterations, garage and outbuilding conversions, secondary dwellings, pools, and changes of use.

What determines the pathway is not the label on the job. Converting a garage into a study, for example, reads as an internal job and is in planning terms a new habitable room, which brings natural light, ventilation, access and the relevant building requirements into scope.

So the first question is never "what are we building" — it is what the property allows, and which pathway that puts you on.

By reading the site before designing for it.

Your section 10.7 planning certificate sets out the planning controls that apply to the land. Alongside it sit the zone, the applicable development control plan, and the constraints mapping — flood, bushfire, heritage, acid sulfate soils — plus what is physically on the site: easements, sewer lines, significant trees, levels and access.

Read together, those establish what is possible before a single line is drawn. That is the point of a Preliminary Planning Assessment: it produces a written planning report with recommendations, so you commit money to a design that can actually be approved rather than discovering the constraint after you have paid for plans.

The property address, what you are hoping to do, and any drawings or documents you already hold.

Useful documents include a survey, existing floor plans, your section 10.7 certificate, reports by other consultants, and any correspondence you have had with council or a certifier. If an application has already been lodged or refused, that correspondence is the most valuable thing you can send.

If you do not have drawings, that is not an obstacle. Where a survey or other specialist input is required we will tell you what is needed and can coordinate it through the consultants we work with — surveyors, structural engineers, bushfire and flood consultants, arborists and heritage consultants.

Our fee depends on the pathway, the scope of documentation, and whether other consultants are required. We give a written fee proposal before any work begins, so you are never guessing.

Authority charges sit outside that and are set by others — council application and assessment fees, certifier fees, and NSW Planning Portal charges.

The expensive version of this process is not the fee. It is designing first and checking later, then paying to redraw when the constraint that was always on the title finally surfaces.

No, and be careful of anyone who does. A council or certifier decides an application; a planner prepares, documents and argues it.

What we can do is make the case as strong as the property allows: establish the pathway before design starts, document against the controls that actually apply, and answer the assessor's questions inside the application rather than after it.

That is the difference between an application that is assessed and one that is argued.