90deeb5e

Outcomes of Creedence Planning Objections

Sun, 22 Mar 2026 04:08:36 GMT

Now that you have decided that you need to object to a DA, before you swoop, it's time to get the lie of the land and inform yourself of what the likely outcome of such a move might be.

A relevant question is - how effective have Creedence Planning Objections been for our clients?

We have kept statistics on the outcomes of every objection job we have been involved in since recommencing trade in 2022.

One point to make, we do not submit objections to development that we cannot find any problems with. All of the objections below were in response to DA's that we considered to be unreasonable in some way.

Councils and Council town planners will react to objections in any number of different ways. Whilst we can guarantee the quality and accuracy of our work, we cannot control the level of professionalism or due diligence that will occur in the field of development assessment in local government. That is up to the individuals concerned. Council planners are always caught in-between the competing interests of applicants and objectors and navigating that conflict can often be difficult and stressful for them. Sometimes, they will simply form a different view that does not align with yours, or ours.

However, as you will see below, in most cases, efforts are made to address the concerns that are raised. We hope this table of DA objection outcomes is useful to you.

Why choose Creedence Planning?

Tue, 11 Oct 2022 03:10:10 GMT

Thanks for visiting, but don't buzz off just yet. Are you wondering what sets us apart from the rest of the bunch? Take a deeper dive into Creedence Planning.

Hello there!

While you are casually checking out this website, what questions are popping up for you?

There are plenty of town planning consultancies in the Hunter Region. What sets Creedence Planning apart from the rest of the bunch?

Who is Creedence Planning?

What do we stand for? What are our values?

Why didn't we spell-check our business name?

Cool logo, but what does it mean?

All very good questions!

Hereunder lies a deeper dive into Creedence Planning.

Creedence Planning is a small, local Newcastle town planning consultancy, currently run by Gordon Edgar, a very experienced urban planner who has recently worked for the City of Newcastle council but has experience in multiple local council areas in multiple roles on many and varied development projects throughout the Sydney metropolitan area, Central Coast and, more recently, in the Hunter Region. This is the second iteration of Creedence Planning, which formerly operated successfully for many years in Sydney.

Large, complex job, small backyard job, everything inbetween, Creedence Planning is highly versatile in its capabilities. In spite of having worked all these years in the complex world that is the NSW planning system, we have never lost our passion for applying good design and planning direction to development projects.

When it is necessary, as our client, you will get an honest, professional appraisal of how you may need to alter your proposal to improve the chances of gaining a time-efficient and cost-efficient approval. We will ‘tell it to you straight’ rather than making promises that we know won’t ultimately come to fruition, thus avoiding disappointment, frustration and wasting precious time. We respect your vision and see it as our job to improve upon it and deliver its approval, all the while, taking you with us on that journey. Of course, as a client, you always have the option of listening to our advice and then deciding to maintain your original design outcome nonetheless and we will advocate respectfully and professionally for your proposal. In such circumstances, any potential re-design request from the consent authority would, at least, not come as an unexpected surprise.

It's true that the business name ‘Creedence Planning’ references the word ‘credence’, the dictionary definition of which is “credibility". We see it as our mission to establish the credibility or 'approvability' of your development. The business name also references the word “creed”, which is defined as “a system of belief.” It is our belief that we can spell a business name any way we like. On that note, the dictionary spelling of ‘credence’ never really made sense phonetically and so we have chosen to add another “e” in there, to avoid mispronunciation and, just because it looks better. Also, in reverence to a late 1960’s / early 1970’s rock band who we feel got the spelling right way back then.

Whilst the story of our business name might all seem a fanciful notion, it is actually a good illustration of how we might typically advocate for your project. We will build a convincing argument to the consent authority by challenging the established norms where it makes good sense to do so and referencing any relevant precedents to achieve what we would consider to be the better result.

Another thing worth noting when choosing a town planner is that you may well initially speak to a very experienced director in the larger firms but, more often than not, your job will ultimately end up on the desk of a more junior planner who will do the vast majority of the work in putting together your DA and writing the Statement of Environmental Effects. Gordon Edgar has worked in the planning industry in New South Wales for well over 30 years and he alone will be personally putting together your development application and supporting material, if you should decide to choose Creedence Planning.

Getting down to dollars and sense. We are sure you are probably wondering how much your DA approval will cost you. As a recent re-start-up, Creedence Planning is seriously interested in repeat business from its clients and building up a good reputation as a dependable, cost-efficient, expert town planning consultancy, capable of handling any job. Towards this end, our fees have been set at a competitive level compared to the rest of the market with equivalent experience/expertise. This means you get ‘more bang for your buck’ than you would with our competitors but you still receive an expert level of service nonetheless.

The colourful logo for Creedence Planning (above) has been with us for 20 years and it was a pleasure to dust if off and give it a second life. It symbolises Creedence Planning bringing together the built and natural environments harmoniously through the combination of good design, good planning and the juxtaposition of carefully chosen colours, text and images. Hopefully, it is a logo people will appreciate and remember.

That's us, how about you?

Why not start the ball rolling, tell us about your project and ask us for an obligation-free fee proposal?

Insight on view impact assessment and DA objections

Sat, 13 Aug 2022 04:12:41 GMT

An insider's view on view impact assessment

Figure 1 above: A timber height pole erected on a development site next door to this home and certified as representing the future height of the proposed development by a surveyor. Evidence like this leads to evidence-based, reasonable decision-making on view loss.

Consent authorities throughout New South Wales have a statutory obligation under Section 4.15 of the Environmental Planning & Assessment Act, 1979 to assess all of the potential impacts of a development on all of the potentially impacted adjoining properties, irrespective of whether or not the owners of these adjoining properties have lodged an objection.

Unfortunately, things get missed, particularly for DA's with no objections lodged.

Workloads are very high in councils and there is constant pressure to meet output performance targets. In addition, many young planners working in councils are not given sufficient, meaningful, formal training in assessment skills, such as training in the assessment of view impacts in accordance with the industry accepted “Tenacity” Land and Environment Court Planning Principle*. More often than not, outside of their university study, whatever junior planners in councils know is mostly learned on the job. They should always be supported and mentored by experienced senior planners. Sometimes they are but, alas, mentors are also under their own significant time pressures and the time and effort they put in to help support and train junior staff is not always acknowledged when management is preoccupied with monthly DA turnover statistics. Long-term goals of increasing the technical competence, self confidence and job satisfaction of their staff are sometimes overlooked.

There is rarely ever any proper independent scrutiny over the quality and appropriateness of the decisions being made on DA's. A tempting view to take is that it is quicker, easier and 'low risk' to approve a non-complying DA with no objections without requesting amended plans than it is to ask for amended plans with a higher degree of compliance and proper justification of any non-compliance as a quicker determination improves monthly DA turnover statistics. Overly "customer serviced focussed" consent authorities lose their way in the respective weight that is given to their role as a responsible consent authority and their perception of what good customer service is. There is a perception in some consent authorities that ‘the customer’ is only the applicant when the reality is that a consent authority’s true ‘customer’ is, not only the applicant but, the wider community of the LGA. A council’s statutory obligation and ‘contract with the community’ is that it will make evidence-based decisions and assess DA’s consistently and reasonably against the applicable local planning controls and accepted industry standards (such as the ‘Tenacity’ Planning Principle, in relation to view impact).

Too often, view impact concerns, if they are addressed in DA’s at all, are addressed in a cursory way without any definitive evidence being produced. I have seen some DA’s involving both height and floor space ratio non-compliances being justified by intricate and misleading caselaw arguments that incorrectly suggest that view impact is not a relevant consideration when assessing a statutory non-compliance. I have seen other cases where view impacts are obviously likely but assertions are made in the DA documentation that there are no view impacts with no evidence submitted to support such claims.

The reality is that consent authority planners struggle to do their job in an imperfect system. They are frequently time-pressed, without adequate support or training and their performance is measured on the basis of speed and volume of determinations, but not quality of decision making. This unfortunate environment gives them little incentive to take the time to question the veracity of the DA information in front of them every time, as they should. Consequently, there is a very real prospect for avoidable, non-compliant development with unreasonable view impacts on adjoining properties 'slipping through the system' and being approved, particularly if no objections have been lodged.

It is already too late when you are watching the house next door being constructed and it is clear that a significant view you currently enjoy will be blocked. Third party appeals cannot be fought based on merit issues, they must be based on procedural issues, so a failure of the consent authority planner to reach a proper conclusion on an assessment question is just your plain bad luck after the consent is issued.

You must take action before the consent is granted to ensure the reasonable protection of your views. That means submitting an objection during the notification period, which is usually a 14 day period occurring just after the DA is lodged. A detailed objection with evidence of a likely unreasonable view impact and written in accordance with the industry accepted 'Tenacity' Planning Principle would be difficult for the consent authority planner to ignore.

Have you received a letter in the mail regarding a new DA and you think your views may be impacted?

If so, time is limited, act now. Protect your investment and contact Creedence Planning for advice. One of our unique strengths at Creedence Planning is attention to technical detail. If there is a non-compliance, design issue, missing information, unreasonable view (or any other) impact arising from the DA, we will find them and bring any such matters to the attention of the council planner to assist them in seeking better design alternatives and making a reasonable, evidence-based decision.

* Tenacity Consulting v Warringah [2004] NSWLEC 140

Accelerated Development Applications

Wed, 27 Jul 2022 05:07:27 GMT

The new "freeway" for DA assessment.........

The City of Newcastle Council ('CN') has recently introduced an Accelerated Development Applications ('ADA') initiative to create a new stream of rapidly processed DA's that are deemed to be 'low risk.' The aim is to have these ADA DA's determined generally within 15 days. Wouldn't that be nice?

The development types that may qualify as suitable for the ADA process include dwellings, ancillary residential development (eg sheds, pools, retaining walls, front fences etc), secondary dwellings, demolition work, change of uses, commercial development, light industrial development, signage, strata subdivision, Torrens Title subdivision and modifications to existing development consents.

But, hold-on, it's not quite that easy......

The information requirements for ADA's could possibly be considered to be even more onerous than the submission requirements for regular DA's. This is because there is no option for the council to ask for additional information once it has accepted that the proposal is an ADA and commits to a 15 day turn-around. Very detailed checklists and specific standard templates for a Statement of Environmental Effects for each development type is provided by council as submission requirements for ADA's.

The way the ADA process works is that you submit the proposal and its supporting information as an Accelerated Lodgement Ready ('ALR') request directly to CN prior to lodging it with the NSW DA Portal. CN reviews the ALR and will then confirm whether the proposal qualifies as an ADA. If it does, it will then be determined generally within 15 days. However, if additional information or changes to the proposal are required, or, if it is deemed to not be eligible for CN's ADA service, this will be advised in writing by CN. The proposal would then need to go through the regular DA process through the NSW DA Portal.

There are no second chances for any given proposal with ALR requests, which is why you need to be sure to put your best foot forward the first time for an Accelerated Development Application request.

Why not choose Creedence Planning to see if we can accelerate your DA?