Applicant Enquiries
Research the local, state and federal planning information and property constraints in seconds. Determine categories of assessment, referral matters and potentially applicable assessment benchmarks within minutes.
What are Enquiries?
Enquiries are a helpful tool for applicants, developers, consultants, and real estate agents to use in their day-to-day development assessment and pre-lodgement processes. This tool assists users in researching various development assessment matters applicable to the site and helps manage enquiries from customers prior to the lodgement of development applications.
What do I use Enquiries for?
Enquiries can be used for the following purposes:
researching planning constraints and designations;
researching development potential and opportunities;
determining if a development application is required to be submitted to the Authority;
determining if a development application requires referral to a State or Federal Authority; and
determining the assessment benchmarks and requirements for a proposed development.
Who can use Enquiries?
All roles within your organisation can use the enquiries functionality. Use this link to learn more about Authority Roles & Permissions.
How do I use Enquiries?
Enquiries can be categorised into two types, Preliminary Enquiries and Comprehensive Enquiries.
Preliminary Enquiries allow the Applicant to research the local, state and federal planning constraints and designations on the property/ies.
Comprehensive Enquiries allow the Applicant to further research the development potential for a property/ies, determine if a development application is required to be submitted to the Authority, determine if the application requires referral to a State or Federal authority and determine the assessment benchmarks for the proposed development.
Both types of Enquiries allow for the generation of the Planning Summary report. The Planning Summary is a collection of information that can be viewed as a PDF document and provided a summary of the enquiry you just created - the level of detail contained in the report will be affected by how far you have progressed through the steps and how much information has been entered. Use this document for internal meetings about development potential or external meetings with the Authority e.g. Pre-lodgement meetings.
How do I create Preliminary Enquiries?
Preliminary Enquiries |
1. At the Applications dashboard select New in the top left corner of the toolbar.
2. At the Location (Applicant) step, type the property/ies address for the enquiry and select the correct property from the dropdown list. Alternatively, use the interactive map to select the property/ies. Your selected properties will populate on the right. Select Save & Proceed.
When searching by street address, don't use commas.
For example, use ‘6 William Street Waterford West’.
Don’t use ‘6 William Street, Waterford West’.
When searching by lot and plan, you must type the words ‘lot' and 'plan’ in your search, and add a space in between each word and number sequence.
For example, use ‘Lot 1186 RP 880617'.
Don't use these formats: ‘1186RP880617’, 'Lot 1186 RP880617'.
If you are having issues finding the property, try typing the property address, not copying pasting. The search tool is sensitive to invisible characters and extra spaces inbetween letters and numbers.
3. The software will gather information relevant to the selected properties from local, state & federal sources.
4. You are now at the Proposal step, select the Planning Summary button in the top right of the software. Read What can I find in my Planning Summary?.
5. In the top right corner of the Planning Summary, select the Download button. The software will generate a Preliminary Planning Summary report. All of the detail from the Planning Summary will be added to the PDF.
You can stop an enquiry at any time, once you pass the Location step your Enquiry will save into the Enquiries dashboard. If you would like to progress the Enquiry see How do I create Comprehensive Enquiries? below.
How do I create Comprehensive Enquiries?
Comprehensive Enquiries |
1. Complete the instructions from How do I create Preliminary Enquiries? Or open an Enquiry from the Enquiries Dashboard.
2. At the Proposal (Applicant) step, if available, enter the preliminary proposal details by property group (local plan, zone or precinct), and read the local legislation to determine the development potential for that property/ies.
You are not required to enter anything at the proposal step to complete an enquiry.
3. Use the development type tabs in the top left corner to navigate between the applicable local legislation and proposal fields (e.g. MCU/ROL/OPW). Once you have entered the preliminary proposal details select Save & Proceed.
4. The software will open the Planning Summary for the properties. Read What can I find in my Planning Summary?, to learn more about the Planning Summary feature. Select Continue.
Did you know you can download the Planning Summary report at any point during an enquiry? Based on which step you have progressed to will determine the amount of detail added to the report. Select Download in the top right corner to download a PDF of the Planning Summary.
5. The Save Enquiry window will pop up. Select the development type for the Enquiry, then enter the nature of the development type and the application type. Select Save.
You can propose multiple development types and application types for the enquiry.
You can find your Enquiries in the Enquiries dashboard. The Enquiries dashboard is located in the top left corner of the software. You can come back to the enquiry at any time using this dashboard.
6. At the Categories (Applicant) step, work left to right and top to bottom, making your way down the left navigation pane, reading the local legislation in the middle pane and completing the category questions on the right pane for the preliminary proposal. Once you have completed all the category questions, select Save & Proceed.
7. At the State & Federal (Applicant) step, work left to right and top to bottom, making your way down the left navigation pane, reading the state & federal legislation in the middle pane and completing the category, referral and assessment questions on the right pane for the preliminary proposal. Once you have completed all the State & Federal questions, select Save & Proceed.
8. At the Codes (Applicant) step, the software will present you with the potentially applicable assessment benchmarks based on the planning constraints and preliminary proposal details entered. Review the assessment benchmarks and select if they are Relevant or Irrelevant.
Use the View button to read the applicability of the code or the category table to determine the relevance of the assessment benchmark.
9. At this stage in the process all the preliminary research is complete. If you choose to progress in the next steps you will be creating a development application, to do this select Save & Proceed. Select the Enquiries Dashboard in the top left toolbar to stop the enquiry or New to start a new enquiry.
Where are the existing Enquiries located?
Existing (saved) Enquiries are located in the Enquiries dashboard. The Enquiries dashboard can be found in the top toolbar of the software.
Did you know you can add a reference number to your enquiry? Select the edit icon next to ‘Reference’ field on the top left corner (under the property addresses) of the enquiry window.