Our methodology
Most planning tools tell you what the rules say. Plan Advice tells you how your council actually applies them. Here is the logic — and the data — behind every assessment we produce.
The foundation
We have assembled and indexed thousands of historical development application determinations from councils across NSW — including the assessment reasoning behind approvals and refusals. When we assess your proposal, we look at how your council has actually decided comparable applications in your zone, not just what the legislation permits in theory.
Core numeric controls — building height, floor space ratio, minimum lot size — are checked mathematically against the actual standards that apply to your land under your council’s Local Environmental Plan. These checks are exact pass/fail calculations, not AI opinion, so the foundation of every assessment is verifiable.
Zoning, lot boundaries, heritage listings, and planning overlays are pulled in real time from official NSW Government spatial services — the same datasets councils rely on. Nothing is cached from an out-of-date snapshot, and the statutory instruments in our library (LEPs, SEPPs, DCPs) are kept current.
Our AI doesn’t answer from general knowledge. For every assessment it retrieves the most comparable local decisions and the exact planning provisions that apply, then reasons over that evidence — citing its sources. Where it flags a risk, it can point to the decision or control that justifies it.
Under the hood
Five stages run every time you request an analysis. The exact weighting and retrieval logic is our secret sauce — but the shape of the pipeline is no mystery.
Your address is matched to its lot, zone, and the exact planning instruments that govern it.
Current controls, overlays and constraints are collected from live government sources, alongside comparable decisions from your council.
Height, FSR and lot-size compliance are computed deterministically against your LEP’s development standards.
The AI weighs your proposal against how similar applications were actually determined — surfacing likely objections and conditions.
Findings are compiled into a plain-English report where material claims are traceable to a source.
The honest comparison
Where we draw the line: Plan Advice is preliminary planning guidance, not formal planning or legal advice, and no tool can bind a consent authority. What we can do is make sure that when you engage council — or a consultant — you arrive better informed than almost anyone else in the room.
The free analysis takes minutes — no signup, no card.