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03
Approvals pathway
CDC or DA. This single choice drives your timeline, your cost, and your risk.
The basics — free
- A Complying Development Certificate is issued by a registered certifier or council, typically within 20 days, with no neighbour notification and no merit assessment - but only if every standard is met.
- A Development Application is assessed on merit by council, takes longer, and can be refused or conditioned.
- You do not get to pick freely: if you miss one CDC standard, you are on the DA pathway.
Working detail — locked
Pay once, it's yours
4 detailed points on this stage alone, plus every other stage, the cost calculator, and the sourced eligibility detail.
Where this stage costs people money
Lodging a CDC application that misses a standard. It gets rejected, you've paid the certifier, and you start the DA process from scratch anyway.