Sixteen NSW councils will trial technologies to speed up development assessment timeframes, as part of the State Government’s $A5.6 million investment into introduce artificial intelligence into the planning system.

The successful councils applied for grants under the State’s Early Adopter Grant Program to trial technologies that will improve the quality and accuracy of information when a development application is lodged.

Councils assess approximately 85 per cent of all residential development applications and this process is often strained by administrative delays, duplications and mistakes, or site-specific requirements that are not met prior to submitting a development application.

These are all issues that could be identified and resolved before a development application even arrives on a planner’s desk, leaving planners to approve homes more efficiently.

Improving the quality of the original application reduces the number of requests for more information which saves significant time.

For example, of nearly 500 applications accepted into the Regional Housing Flying Squad Program in the past year additional information was required for around 30 per cent of development proposals with applicants taking, on average, an additional 42 days to respond with the information.

The combined saving of not having to request additional information on this relatively small group alone would be around 6300 days – or the equivalent of 17 years. If that is applied across the nearly 60,000 applications that are submitted in NSW each year, it means a saving of hundreds of thousands of days.

Each Council grant recipient will be supported to trial their nominated new technology for a year.

The Early Adopter Grant Program recipients include:

• Bayside Council
• Blacktown City Council
• Burwood Council
• Cessnock City Council
• City of Canterbury Bankstown
• City of Newcastle (with co-applicants: Central Coast Council and Muswellbrook Shire Council)
• Cumberland City Council
• Eurobodalla Shire Council
• Hawkesbury City Council
• Inner West Council
• Lake Macquarie City Council
• Randwick City Council
• Wagga Wagga City Council
• Wingecarribee Shire Council

The grant funding forms part of the NSW Government’s wider AI in NSW Planning package.

For more information on successful councils and their grant projects, visit the AI in NSW Planning Web site.