Planning & Build-Cost Benchmarks: Approval Odds, Decision Times and Cost per Home

How likely is approval, how long will it take, and what does a new home cost to build? Benchmarks for every authority, from the official registers.

For architects, developers, builders, quantity surveyors and lenders pricing a scheme, setting a programme or advising a client.

What is in the pack

• Ireland: every planning authority, by application type (permission, retention, outline) and year: grant and refusal rates, days from receipt to decision, how often further information is asked for, how often decisions are appealed and overturned, and homes granted.
• New South Wales: every council, by kind of development and year: days from lodgement to determination, and how many applications are withdrawn or rejected.
• NSW build costs: the declared cost per new home on development applications, by council, housing type (detached house, granny flat, dual occupancy, townhouses, apartments, mixed use, co-living, seniors housing), number of storeys and year, with quartiles.
• Isle of Man: every area, by year: approval rate, delegated decisions, and how often appeals succeed.

Good to know

• NSW costs are the cost of development declared on the application, which councils use to set fees: a benchmark of what schemes are declared at, not a quantity surveyor's estimate.
• The NSW Planning Portal does not publish whether an application was approved or refused, so NSW has timelines but no approval rate.
• Groups of fewer than 10 applications show counts only, so every rate and median rests on real numbers.

Not sure yet? Download the free sample and check the columns first.

Licences

All sources are open data you can reuse commercially. Keep the attributions listed on the data sources & licences page.