Central Coast Council is one of 16 NSW councils which have been given grant money to introduce artificial intelligence (AI) to help speed up the assessment of development applications (DAs).
It is a pilot program to see if a supplier’s AI software can improve current times for DAs.
Council, which applied in a joint submission with Newcastle and Muswellbrook, has one year to spend its share of $390,200 given to the three councils.
The State Government believes that AI can help accelerate planning processes by harnessing the power of big data, improving productivity and reducing the administrative burden on planners.
Council said it submitted a joint application with the City of Newcastle and Muswellbrook Shire Council to trial the integration of AI technologies as part of the NSW Government’s $5.6M investment in improving the planning system to benefit from a shared and coordinated grant application and discounted costs.
“Council will still be working individually with the supplier to trial AI technology within our planning functions,” a spokesperson said.
The overall aim of the AI technologies is to assist applicants and councils to easily identify site specific development requirements that are required to be addressed as part of a DA by using industry ready solutions.
“Given this is a new trial grant program, it is hard to estimate the benefits at this stage however we are hopeful it will assist to reduce assessment timeframes across the Central Coast,” Council said.
Council is working with the vendor and other councils to have the trial commence before the end of the year.
The trial comes at the same time as a new table has become public on the NSW Planning website showing DA processing times.
From 1 July, council performance will be monitored on a monthly basis.
The average NSW assessment time for all types of DAs was 114 days and the Coast took 140 days in the last financial year.
Break that down to only residential DAs and the NSW average time was 113 days and the Coast took 136 days.
For more information on the AI initiative visit: https://www.planning.nsw.gov.au/assess-and-regulate/development-assessment/artificial-intelligence-in-nsw-planning
Merilyn Vale