Own in North Sydney? An Expert Review reads these numbers against your street, your zoning and your timing.
Book an Expert ReviewThe arc is 154 days to 80 days in under two years. In March 2025, the Planning Minister wrote to North Sydney Council requiring an improvement plan after DA determinations averaged 154 days against a 115-day ministerial target. By July 2025, assessment time was down to 74 days. Council's own cumulative figure to 31 January 2026 is 80 days average processing, 25 days under the newer 105-day target, with lodgement time itself down from 38 days to 5.
Six metro councils received ministerial letters. Four were placed under direct state management. North Sydney avoided that. The pressure does not relax from here: ministerial targets tighten to 95 days for the 2026 to 2027 financial year and 85 days from 1 July 2027.
What it means for an owner: the "council will bury my DA" era in North Sydney is, on current numbers, over for standard applications, and the state has locked in targets that keep it over. A plan made this year runs against an 80-day council, not a 154-day one.
North Sydney meets the tightened 95 day target in the 2026 to 2027 financial year. On the current trajectory and with lodgement already down to 5 days, we expect the published average to hold at or under 95 days through the year. We publish calls like this so you can hold us to them, and if we are wrong, you will read it here first.
The honest caveats
On the state's own league table, North Sydney's headline lodgement and assessment figures look strong, but regionally significant DAs average 350 days. About 15 per cent of DAs are determined externally: Land and Environment Court matters average 408 days, the Sydney North Planning Panel 260. Council itself has proposed a separate 275-day target for large-scale applications. The average value of a DA in the LGA is reported by council to be the highest in the state, on council's own account rather than as independent fact.
Comparative context: Lane Cove assesses in 48 days, North Sydney 83 to 80 depending on the snapshot, Mosman and Willoughby both around 103.
What is actually driving the CBD
The state is overriding council on its own commercial core in several live matters. At 275 Alfred Street, a Housing Delivery Authority pathway proposal sits at 39 storeys and a floor space ratio of 16 to 1 against a base of roughly 3.5 to 1. At 173 Walker Street and 11 to 17 Hampden Street, a 239-apartment, 30-storey scheme was approved in April 2025 via a 30 per cent affordable-housing bonus, over council's formal objection and despite 132 of the first 135 public submissions objecting. The pattern across the lower North Shore right now: objections are being overridden, and the one lever that has genuinely stopped a project is heritage listing, as it did with the MLC Building on Miller Street.
- North Sydney Council, development assessment processing times page, data to 31 January 2026
- NSW Planning Portal, Council League Table, May 2026 snapshot
- Public reporting on the 173 Walker Street and 275 Alfred Street proposals