Helpful planning acronyms
Helpful planning acronyms
For those of you unfamiliar with some of these acronyms, an overview follows:
CPP - A new new statewide Community (non) Participation Plan which overrides the CPP that your local council created in consultation with its residents. This statewide CPP determines community input including which developments are exhibited, which are exempted from exhibition and the minimum time frames for exhibition.
TOD – Transport Oriented Developments are state government designated areas of high density residential units around certain train stations.
TAD - Targeted Assessment Developments will sit between Complying Development and full DA Assessment. Basically they're Complying Development on steroids.
SSD - In 2023 State Significant Development definitions were expanded to include residential development, allowing the NSW Minister for Planning to designate apartment blocks that meet certain criteria as being SSD. Criteria include an estimated development cost of $60M in Sydney, Newcastle and Wollongong, and $30M in regional NSW.
SSR - In November 2025 the State Government published its State Significant Rezoning Policy. This allows the NSW Government to override a Local Environmental Plan and rezone a site or area if residential rezoning is considered by the Minister to be of state or regional significance. Considerations are - assessment time savings, a DA that can be submitted within 6 months, a site that's well located, there would be 100 jobs created, 50 affordable dwellings, or 100 dwellings in regional NSW and 500 dwellings in metropolitan NSW.
LMR – Low and Mid-Rise This is a two-step reform. The Low Rise Housing reform allows dual occupancies (duplexes), terraces, townhouses and manor houses on residential blocks of a certain size, with some exceptions such as on bushfire prone land. The Mid Rise Housing reform allows 3 to 6 storey mid-rise apartment buildings. In reality, with the Affordable Housing Bonus, up to 9 storeys is permissible plus greater site coverage, if 'affordable' housing is included in the development.