Inner West Council — Development Application Data
Inner West Council processes one of Sydney's largest development application pipelines with 4479 DAs lodged in the past year from a total of 12929 on file since 2021. The council's 34.29% Clause 4.6 variation usage rate signals frequent negotiations around height, floor space ratio and setback standards in this high-density area. Assessment timelines run to a median of 94 days. Development activity skews heavily toward smaller works, with 4826 applications under $100k and 3795 alterations and additions projects, though the council also handles substantial apartment development including 215 residential flat buildings and 374 dual occupancy proposals. Projects between $500k and $5M represent 3268 applications, reflecting the mixed character of the inner west where renovation and infill development dominate. Whether you're planning a minor addition or a multi-unit build, a Plan Advice AI-powered assessment delivers site-specific planning intelligence for your Inner West Council property in seconds.
Determination outcomes
Real approval, refusal and withdrawal rates from finalised DAs in the Plan Advice enriched corpus.
Based on the 100% of DAs in our Inner West Council corpus with a confirmed determination. Applications still under assessment, and any whose outcome the council has not published, are excluded rather than estimated.
Why DAs get refused in Inner West Council
Grounds cited across 8 refused applications, read from the council's own notices of determination. Most refusals cite several grounds at once, so these overlap.
Behind each ground above sits the verbatim paragraph the assessing officer wrote, the LEP and DCP clauses it was tested against, and the address and DA number so you can pull the notice yourself. 131 grounds across Inner West Council are indexed this way.
See the grounds in fullDevelopment type mix
What people are building in Inner West Council. Ranked by DA volume.
Development cost distribution
Estimated development cost ranges reported on Inner West Council DAs.
Inner West 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 Inner West Council handle?
Plan Advice holds 13,130 development applications for Inner West Council, 4,554 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 Inner West Council?
The median assessment time is 94 days for FY25-26, after a median 4 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 Inner West Council approve?
96.9% of the 27,408 determined applications we hold were approved and 3.1% were refused. We can read a determination for 100% of this council's DAs; the rest are counted as unknown rather than assumed approved.
What kinds of development are most common in Inner West Council?
The most frequent application types are alterations & additions (3,819), dual occupancy (380), residential flat building (219).
How often is a clause 4.6 variation used in Inner West Council?
4,454 applications — 33.92% 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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