How do I respond to a Further advice?
When a Further advice is issued by the Authority, if the applicant chooses to respond to a Further advice, they can do so within the software. The process in which Further advice are responded to happens within the Further advice status.
This authority notice may have a legislative requirement to respond, check on the notice or contact your authority to confirm these timeframes.
Steps within the Further advice process |
When a Further advice is issued, the applicant will receive an email with a link to the application in the software and a copy of the Further advice PDF document.
Although you have been sent the PDF Further advice document to review, it is only a receipt of the tasks completed within the software. Your Further advice items are attached to specific steps and workflows within the software, each of them is now a task for you to complete, each Further advice item requires a response.
How to respond to a Further advice
1. Select the links in the email to open both the PDF document for review and the application in the software.
It is important that you are still reviewing the PDF document, as there may be information on the document that isn't available in the software. This may include information on how and when to respond to the requests.
2. The software will open the application on the step that requires action. E.g. If the authority has identified that there is an Further advice item about the applications assessment against an assessment benchmark the user will be taken to the Reporting step to complete a response about the assessment benchmark item.
3. The Further advice item (authority request) will be visible within the software directly above the item they are actioning.
The image below shows an example of an Further advice item about an assessment benchmark for the proposed height.
4. The Applicant is provided with the option to respond to the request within the ‘Applicant Response’ text box. If required, the Applicant can also change their answer to the item.
In the example above the applicant has responded to the request (shown in red) and they may choose to update their category answer from ‘Complies with PO2' to ‘Not compliant’.
5. Mark the requested item complete and move to your next task. Use the navigation panels on the left side of the screen and the steps along the top of the screen to determine your incomplete tasks. Steps will become orange when they have incomplete tasks within them.
You have the option to update any of your assessment answers while the application is within the Further advice status. This could include updating a response to assessment criteria at the Reporting - Codes (Applicant) step, even though no Further advice requests were made of that item. Your previous responses and answers are stored in the historic versions of the application.
6. Once you have completed your tasks for the Further advice items, and made any changes to the application, you can now lodge the application back to the Authority to view your changes and responses.
7. Navigate to the Publish (Applicant) step. Here you can refresh the parts of your development application.
A summary of changes will populate in your PDF development application, listing changes between the previous status and this status.
8. Select the Publish button to submit the response to the Further advice. A pop-up will generate asking you to confirm you would like the application to be re-submitted. Select Yes.
9. The status of the application will update from Further advice status to Evaluation status. The application will then be locked for the applicant from making changes.
10. The Authority assessment team will be notified by email that a response to the Further advice has been lodged.
Never worry about losing your copy of the Further advice PDF. The software stores all documents between the applicant and authority in the Documents feature feature. Use this feature at any time to retrieve historical notices and reports.