Willoughby City Council — Development Application Data
Development activity in Willoughby runs at a notably high tempo, with 1268 applications lodged in the past year across a council area serving Sydney's lower North Shore. The median assessment time sits at 101 days, and applicants sought Clause 4.6 variations to development standards in 19.09% of the 3101 DAs on file since 2021. Most applications fall under "Other" development categories, followed by alterations and additions, though dual occupancies, residential flat buildings and subdivisions make up a meaningful share of the pipeline. Cost profiles spread broadly: 1085 projects came in under $100,000, while 148 exceeded $5 million, and 532 sat in the $500,000 to $1 million band. The council area encompasses established residential neighbourhoods where heritage considerations, streetscape character and floor space ratio limits frequently shape what gets approved and what meets resistance, though insufficient refusal data prevents detailed analysis of specific grounds at this stage. A Plan Advice AI assessment for your Willoughby property delivers a data-backed probability and strategy report 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 Willoughby 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 Willoughby City Council. Ranked by DA volume.
Development cost distribution
Estimated development cost ranges reported on Willoughby City Council DAs.
Willoughby 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 Willoughby City Council handle?
Plan Advice holds 3,141 development applications for Willoughby City Council, 1,283 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 Willoughby City Council?
The median assessment time is 101 days for FY25-26, after a median 16 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 Willoughby City Council approve?
96.8% of the 1,122 determined applications we hold were approved and 3.2% 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 Willoughby City Council?
The most frequent application types are alterations & additions (782), dual occupancy (95), residential flat building (83).
How often is a clause 4.6 variation used in Willoughby City Council?
597 applications — 19.01% 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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