Strong communities depend on strong community organisations, places of worship and schools. They play a vital role in fostering social connection, promoting Australian values and strengthening understanding between people from different backgrounds. Unfortunately, Liverpool City Council's development assessment processes appear to be undermining those very efforts. The stories I hear are remarkably similar. Organisations meet with council staff in good faith. They seek advice before lodging applications. They then engage planners, consultants and engineers, at considerable cost, to prepare reports. Applications are submitted, but they then sit idle in the system for months, if not years. Emails and phone calls go unanswered. Then, after significant delay, requests for additional information suddenly arrive, with unreasonable deadlines. The result is further delay, uncertainty and financial cost.
The Sikh Mission temple in Austral is one such example. Having served the community for many decades, its existing dining hall will now need to make way for a new road. The community has done the right thing. It has raised the funds through donations and secured government grants to build a new dining hall. Completed in 2025, that important community facility has now sat empty for more than a year. The community continues to wait because Liverpool City Council has yet to issue what should be a routine building information certificate. Another example is the Pal Buddhist School, which seeks to establish an additional campus in Austral. The school was recently ranked the number one affordable private school in the State. After lodging its development application [DA] in 2025, the school has experienced repeated requests for further information, tight response deadlines and suggestions that it withdraw and resubmit its application. Those delays place at risk a $1.5 million grant secured through the Building Grants Assistance Scheme.
Then there is the Al‑Madinah Masjid. Six long years ago, in 2020, an application was lodged to construct a mosque to accommodate the growing congregation. Those plans included basement parking and associated community facilities. After years of delays and requests for additional information, the applicants were informed that, due to inflation and rising costs that had pushed the cost of works above the threshold for the DA, it now needed to be determined by the planning panel. After obtaining legal advice to the contrary, the applicant was then advised to again withdraw and resubmit the application.
The common thread across all of those examples is that they involve community‑based, volunteer‑run not‑for‑profit organisations. Unlike commercial developers and commercial developments, they cannot simply pass the costs on or absorb them through higher profits. Those groups rely on the generosity of local families and benefactors. Every additional report, consultant fee and delay comes at a cost. For them, that means fewer resources for educational programs, less support for families in need and fewer opportunities to bring people together.
However, this issue is not just limited to community organisations. I have received dozens of reports from families and small businesses of DAs being submitted to Liverpool City Council but then quickly rejected for the most trivial of reasons before formal lodgement. Like PAL and Al-Madinah, I have heard numerous examples and accounts of applicants being encouraged to withdraw and resubmit long-running applications, often with promises of full refunds. The result is more delays, more cost and more frustration for applicants, while conveniently improving the council's average DA assessment times. Taken together, these practices give the appearance of a council more focused on improving its assessment numbers than improving service. By rejecting applications on technicalities or encouraging applicants to withdraw and start again, assessment times look better on paper but the real-world outcome tells a different story.
These concerns are particularly relevant given Liverpool's recent history with DA time frames. In 2023 it ranked the worst in Sydney for the average development assessment time. Then two years later, in 2025, the council published a media release publicly celebrating claims that it had halved approval times and cleared its backlog. All this comes on the back of the recent public inquiry into Liverpool City Council and broader questions around governance, transparency and decision-making at that organisation. Under section 9.6 of the Environmental Planning and Assessment Act, the Minister may appoint a planning administrator if a council has failed to comply with its planning obligations or if its handling of planning and development matters is unsatisfactory. Given the issues I have outlined, it may be time for the Minister to intervene.
