About & data methodology

australianplanning is an independent planning and developer-intelligence reference built from approved government open data. Public search is free; commissioned developer briefs and monitoring are the commercial service.

What the data is

The core record is a development application lodged on the NSW Planning Portal. It is joined at council level to ABS building approvals and NSW heritage evidence. National approvals and ABS area profiles extend the comparison beyond NSW; ASIC supplies company identity and status only.

How it is processed

• Applications are organised by the source council and stable application reference. Modification applications are kept as records but their restated dwelling totals are deduplicated in council pipeline calculations.
• Decision time is lodgement to determination only where both dates exist. The denominator is stated; missing dates remain unknown.
• Cost of works is the applicant's stated estimate, not a valuation or assessed final cost. Extreme keying errors are excluded from calculated medians.
• Planning applications and ABS approvals cover different periods, so pipeline ratios annualise both sides and remain labelled calculations.

Complete evidence, not padded pages

A council can have few records and still provide a complete answer. Pages are indexable when the council identity, distinct question, source completeness, evidence states and provenance are clear. Quantity thresholds are used only for statistical validity, such as ranking a decision-time median, never to make a page look substantial.

Coverage, honestly

Development applications and detailed planning constraints are NSW-only. Building approvals and ABS area measures cover all states and territories. Applicant, owner, architect and developer names are not published by the NSW Online DA API. NSW sales data is held privately but is not published, refreshed or used in commercial outputs because its CC BY-NC-ND terms do not permit this product. Method & licences records every boundary.