Green Design Sydney
Green Design Sydney
Refused or stalled DA · Second opinion

Your DA was refused. That is rarely the end of it.

A refusal is a decision about the application that was in front of council — not a ruling that nothing can be built on your property. Before you pay anyone to draw it again, it is worth knowing which routes are still open and which of the reasons for refusal can actually be answered.

What a second opinion covers Send us the refusal notice
01 — Start with the notice

The reasons for refusal decide everything that follows.

Every refusal comes with reasons. They are the most important document you own right now, and they are usually skimmed once and put in a drawer. They matter because they sort themselves into two piles, and the piles lead to completely different decisions.

  • Reasons that design can answer. Overshadowing, privacy, setbacks, bulk and scale, landscaped area, parking layout, a control missed or a variation not properly justified. These are matters of degree. A different scheme, or the same scheme properly argued, may satisfy them.
  • Reasons that design cannot answer. The use is prohibited in the zone. The lot does not meet a minimum that has no flexibility. A state policy or an agency referral blocks it outright. Here, redrawing the same proposal is money spent to be refused again.

Most refusal notices contain both. The work is separating them honestly, and being told which is which by someone who is not being paid to redraw it either way.

A refusal is also information you did not have before. It tells you exactly what council will scrutinise next time, in council's own words. Applications that are resubmitted well are often resubmitted better than they would ever have been first time round.
02 — The routes

Four directions, and they are not interchangeable.

Route A

Amend and lodge again

A new application that answers the reasons. Slowest to admit, often fastest to resolve, and the only route that lets you change the proposal properly rather than defend it.

Suits refusals driven by matters of degree — bulk, setbacks, overshadowing, landscaped area, a variation that was not justified.
Route B

Ask council to review its own decision

NSW allows the applicant to request a review of a determination in many cases, with the proposal amended if needed. It is decided by council, not a court, and it has a legislated time limit running from the determination date.

Suits a refusal you believe turned on a misreading, or one where a modest amendment plainly answers the reasons.
Route C

Appeal to the Land and Environment Court

A merit appeal, decided independently of council. It has its own deadline from the determination date, and it is legal work — you will need a planning lawyer, and usually expert evidence.

Suits a proposal you and your advisers believe is genuinely sound and worth the cost and time of running.
Route D

Change the question

Sometimes the property will carry something — just not this. A different building type, a different pathway, a different use, or a smaller project that gets you most of what you wanted without the fight.

Suits refusals with a reason design cannot answer, and owners whose real objective was never this specific scheme.
Time limits are real and they run from the date on the notice, not from when you read it. Both a council review and a court appeal have deadlines set by legislation. Check your determination notice and confirm the date with a planning lawyer before anything else, because a missed date closes a route no matter how good the case was. We are building designers, not lawyers, and we will tell you when the question in front of you is a legal one.
03 — Not refused, just stuck

A DA that has sat for months is usually waiting on one specific thing.

More applications stall than are refused, and stalling costs owners more, because nothing is decided and nothing can be planned around. In our experience the cause is almost always one of a short list:

  • An information request answered in instalments. This is the big one. Every partial answer restarts the assessing officer's reading of the file and moves you to the back of their queue. One complete response beats six quick ones, every time.
  • A referral sitting with another agency — and nobody has asked which one, or what it is waiting for.
  • Submissions from neighbours that have never been answered in a document the officer can actually put in the report.
  • A control the officer cannot get past, where the file needs a written justification rather than another drawing.
  • A change of assessing officer, which resets familiarity with the file and is rarely announced.

The first step is not a phone call asking how it is going. It is a written request for the current status and a list of everything still outstanding, so there is one document that says what "finished" looks like. Then you answer all of it, once.

04 — What we do

A fixed-fee second opinion, before you spend again.

Read the file, not just the notice

The determination and its reasons, the assessment report where one is available, the information requests, the submissions, and the drawings that were lodged. The reasons rarely make full sense without the file behind them.

Test the reasons against the controls and the site

Each reason is checked against the planning controls that actually apply to the property and against what the site can physically do. That is what separates the answerable reasons from the fatal ones.

Set out the routes that remain open

Which of the four directions above are genuinely available to you, what each one asks of you in time, cost and risk, and which we would take if it were our property — with the reasoning, so you can disagree with it.

Give you a written recommendation and a next step

One recommended direction, the specific things that have to change for it to work, and who needs to be involved. If that includes a planning lawyer, a surveyor or a heritage consultant, we say so and we say why.

What it does not do. It does not promise an approval — nobody can, and anyone who does is selling you something. It is not legal advice, and it is not a cost plan. It is the piece of thinking that should have happened before the first application, done now, on a fixed fee, so the next decision is made with your eyes open.

If the honest conclusion is that the project will not work in the form you want, you will be told that plainly and in writing. It is a real outcome of this work and it has saved owners more than any drawing we have produced.
05 — Questions

Straight answers.

Is a refused DA the end of the project?
Usually not. A refusal is council's decision on the application that was in front of it, not a ruling that nothing can be built. Depending on the reasons given, the common routes are an amended application, a review of the determination by council, an appeal to the Land and Environment Court, or a different proposal altogether. What none of them are is automatic - each has its own cost, timeframe and risk, and some are closed off by the reasons in the notice.
How long do I have to act after a refusal?
There are time limits, and they run from the date on the determination notice, not from the day you read it. Both a request for a review by council and an appeal to the Land and Environment Court have deadlines set by legislation, commonly measured in months from that date. Check your notice and confirm the date with a planning lawyer before you make any other decision, because missing the date closes the route regardless of the merits.
Can you appeal a DA refusal for me?
An appeal to the Land and Environment Court is legal work and belongs with a planning lawyer. What we do is the part that comes first and the part that comes after: reading the reasons for refusal against the controls and the site, telling you plainly which reasons are answerable by design and which are not, and preparing the amended scheme if that is the route you take. If an appeal is worth considering we will say so and tell you what a lawyer will need from us.
My DA is not refused, it is just stuck. Can you help?
Yes, and this is more common than refusal. A DA that has been sitting for months is usually waiting on something specific: an outstanding request for information, a referral to another agency, a submission that has not been answered, or a control that the assessing officer cannot get past. The first job is to find out which, in writing, and the second is to answer it properly rather than in instalments. Answering an information request piece by piece is the single most common reason a DA sits for a year.
What does the second opinion cost and how long does it take?
It is a fixed fee for an agreed scope, quoted once we have seen the refusal notice and the property. It is a small fraction of a design set, and it is deliberately sized so that you find out whether to keep going before you pay anyone else again. We will give you the fee and the timeframe in writing before you commit to anything.
What if the honest answer is that the project will not work?
Then we say so, in writing, with the reasons. That is a real outcome and it is often the most valuable one, because it stops good money following the application that was already refused. We would rather lose the drafting work than take a fee for a scheme we do not believe will get through.

More in Straight Answers — including DA or CDC and unapproved work.

Send us the refusal notice.

The first conversation is free. Tell us the property and what you were trying to do, and attach the determination if you have it — we will tell you what we think you are actually looking at.

Ask about your refused DA Call Green Design Sydney