Penrith City Council — Development Application Data
With 2345 development applications lodged in the past year and 6415 on file since 2021, Penrith City Council manages one of the highest DA volumes in Western Sydney. The median assessment time sits at 97 days, giving you a realistic timeline for planning your project. What stands out is the low Clause 4.6 variation usage rate of just 2.17%, suggesting most applications here proceed without needing to vary development standards like height or floor space ratio. The DA landscape is dominated by "Other" category developments at 4047 applications, followed by alterations and additions at 747, and dual occupancies at 568. Cost-wise, the data shows strong activity across all bands, from 2774 applications under $100k to 338 major projects exceeding $5M. If you're considering a development in Penrith, a Plan Advice AI-powered assessment for your property takes seconds to run.
Determination outcomes
Real approval, refusal and withdrawal rates from finalised DAs in the Plan Advice enriched corpus.
Based on the 89.7% of DAs in our Penrith 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.
Why DAs get refused in Penrith City Council
Grounds cited across 30 refused applications, read from the council's own notices of determination. Most recent determination indexed: May 2025. 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. 240 grounds across Penrith City Council are indexed this way.
See the grounds in fullConditions you should expect
Approval is not the finish line — every consent arrives with conditions. This is what Penrith City Council actually imposes, measured from the consent notices it has published.
Conditions marked costs money are the ones to budget for — contributions, bonds, specialist reports and public-domain works.
| 94% | Appoint a principal certifier | |
| 87% | Construction certificate before works start | |
| 80% | Sydney Water approval (Section 73)COSTS MONEY | |
| 79% | Waste management plan | |
| 74% | Stormwater / on-site detentionCOSTS MONEY | |
| 69% | Asbestos / hazardous materials handling | |
| 69% | Erosion and sediment control | |
| 62% | Survey certificate at set-outCOSTS MONEY | |
| 55% | BASIX commitments | |
| 50% | Landscaping to be implemented and maintainedCOSTS MONEY | |
| 43% | Vehicular crossing, footpath and kerb worksCOSTS MONEY | |
| 29% | Tree protection and arborist supervisionCOSTS MONEY |
Based on 141 approvals with a published notice of determination · 6 of the conditions above carry a cost. A condition on most approvals is effectively standard; it is not a guarantee of what any individual consent will say.
Development type mix
What people are building in Penrith City Council. Ranked by DA volume.
Development cost distribution
Estimated development cost ranges reported on Penrith City Council DAs.
Penrith 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 Penrith City Council handle?
Plan Advice holds 6,522 development applications for Penrith City Council, 2,375 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 Penrith City Council?
The median assessment time is 97 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 Penrith City Council approve?
50% of the 1,021 determined applications we hold were approved and 3.4% were refused. We can read a determination for 89.7% of this council's DAs; the rest are counted as unknown rather than assumed approved.
Why are DAs refused in Penrith City Council?
Across 30 refused applications, the grounds cited most often are site not suitable for the development (s4.15(1)(c)) (29 refusals), contrary to the public interest (s4.15(1)(e)) (27 refusals), other ground not covered above (16 refusals). These are read from the council's own notices of determination, and most refusals cite several grounds at once.
What kinds of development are most common in Penrith City Council?
The most frequent application types are alterations & additions (756), dual occupancy (573), subdivision (383).
How often is a clause 4.6 variation used in Penrith City Council?
142 applications — 2.18% 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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