Under the Sustainable Planning Act (SPA), there are circumstances where an application will be deemed approved if the application has not been decided by the assessment manager by the end of the decision making period (or the extended period).

Deemed approval arrangements only apply to applications involving code assessment but they may not always apply - refer to Section 330 of SPA ( 2.6 MB) for specific information.

Deemed approval is not automatic. If the applicant wants the development application to be treated as having been approved by the assessment manager following the end of the decision making period, the applicant must give the assessment manager a deemed approval notice. The assessment manager then has ten business days within which he or she can issue a decision notice imposing conditions on the deemed approval.

If the assessment manager fails to do this, standard conditions (made by the planning minister) will apply. 

Further information

• Development assessment - deemed approvals ( 224 KB)
• Standard conditions for deemed approvals ( 224 KB)