Wollondilly Shire Council has been successful in receiving funding from the Australian Government’s $1.5 billion Housing Support Program.

Recently announced at the Australian Local Government Association conference, this funding will be used to implement Artificial Intelligence in development assessments.

Mayor Matt Gould has welcomed the $367,598 in funding from the Australian Government to go towards improved Development Assessment (DA) processing times and consistency of assessment.

“With Wollondilly already fastest in the Greater Sydney area for DA approvals, this will make our processes even faster and more accurate,” he said.

“Planners spend around 5 to 8 hours setting up to do their assessment, researching the controls for an application and preparing the specific assessment template.”

“This will result in productivity improvements of 10% - 15% per assessment and increased confidence in the accuracy of reports in an increasingly dynamic planning policy environment.”

“Each assessment report is then peer reviewed, in part, to ensure all the relevant planning controls have been assessed. This represents about 10% of the total time a planner spends in assessment, and 25% of the Manager’s time.”

“By eliminating this tedious and error prone task, planners can spend more time focused on assessing applications on their merit, and senior planners will have more time to dedicate to the most sensitive applications.”

The project will implement AI-powered planner tools at both Wollondilly Shire and Penrith City Councils to expedite the generation of assessment reports, making both Councils industry leaders on completion of this project.