Hawkesbury City Council — Development Application Data
Development applications in Hawkesbury City Council take a median 76 days to assess, significantly longer than many metropolitan Sydney councils, reflecting the area's complex mix of rural, environmental and urban planning considerations. Since 2021, the council has processed 3115 DAs, with 1021 lodged in the past year alone. What stands out is the overwhelming dominance of 'Other' category applications at 2438 cases, suggesting a high proportion of rural structures, sheds, and agricultural developments typical of this semi-rural landscape. Traditional residential work like alterations and additions accounts for just 304 applications. Only 3.5% of DAs involve a Clause 4.6 variation to vary development standards, indicating most proposals conform to planning controls or avoid variation requests altogether. Cost distribution is relatively balanced, with 1003 applications under $100k and 958 in the $100k–$500k range. A Plan Advice AI-powered assessment for a property in Hawkesbury City Council takes seconds to run.
Determination outcomes
Real approval, refusal and withdrawal rates from finalised DAs in the Plan Advice enriched corpus.
Based on the 61.1% of DAs in our Hawkesbury City Council corpus with a confirmed determination. Applications still under assessment, and any whose outcome the council has not published, are excluded rather than estimated.
Development type mix
What people are building in Hawkesbury City Council. Ranked by DA volume.
Development cost distribution
Estimated development cost ranges reported on Hawkesbury City Council DAs.
Hawkesbury City Council DAs — common questions
Answered from this council's own determinations. Where a council has not published a figure, the question is left out rather than guessed.
How many development applications does Hawkesbury City Council handle?
Plan Advice holds 3,165 development applications for Hawkesbury City Council, 1,024 of them lodged in the last 12 months. The figures on this page are counted from that register, not estimated.
How long does a DA take in Hawkesbury City Council?
The median assessment time is 76 days for FY25-26, after a median 9 days to get the application accepted for lodgement. That is the council's own reported figure from the NSW Planning Portal league tables, so it covers every DA they determined — not a sample.
What share of DAs does Hawkesbury City Council approve?
93.5% of the 1,871 determined applications we hold were approved and 4% were refused. We can read a determination for 61.1% of this council's DAs; the rest are counted as unknown rather than assumed approved.
What kinds of development are most common in Hawkesbury City Council?
The most frequent application types are alterations & additions (306), subdivision (162), dual occupancy (94).
How often is a clause 4.6 variation used in Hawkesbury City Council?
111 applications — 3.51% of the register — sought a clause 4.6 variation to a development standard.
Most recent development applications
Sampled from the NSW Planning Portal open-data feed.
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