In most cases, a new building development or change in land use requires an application for planning approval to be submitted to the local council.
Following the introduction of the Commonwealth Government stimulus package to support the housing and construction industry, City of Armadale, Western Australia, received an influx of building applications.
Despite the high volume of applications, the City has continued to swiftly process applications with an average timeframe of just three days.
The City attributes its efficient and sustainable building application process to the transition from hardcopy to digital applications.
The digital application process affords increased flexibility in lodging an application for internal and external stakeholders, which earned the City a Master Builders ‘Local Government Best Practice Award’.
During the 2019/2020 financial year 1896 building applications were processed; of these 99.57 percent were processed within an average of three days.
During the current financial year, 1045 building application have been processed to date; with 99.71 percent of applications processed within an average of three days.
The transition to digital building applications is providing a seamless service to ratepayers, applicants, builders and developers.
To further improve business efficiency and customer service, an online lodgement portal is currently being developed to enable applicants to track the progress of their application and streamline mandatory records management practices.
