Bega Valley Shire Council is calling on the community to help address delays in development assessment planning.
Council’s Director of Community, Environment and Planning, Emily Harrison said staffing shortages are continuing to affect development approval timeframes.
“In the 2022/23 financial year, Council’s planning team approved 563 DAs, with an average approval timeframe of 110.72 days,” Ms Harrison said.
“This is much longer than we would like, however we’ve had a significant shortage of planners and development engineers over the last two years.
“This isn’t just a Bega Valley issue – many councils in NSW are struggling with staffing shortages in these areas.
“Due to these delays, we’re seeing an increase in people asking for an update on their DA. While this is understandable, every request means a town planner has to stop their work assessing the DA to provide an update on its progress.
“We’re also getting multiple requests for updates from multiple people on the same DA.;It could be the applicant, the owner, the builder and the architect are all asking the same question at the same time.
“This is why we streamline all communication through the applicant, that is, the person who lodged the DA in the Planning Portal.
