Council DA

Select a stage of the development process from the menu on the left or if you’re on a phone or tablet it is above (the 3 white lines brings up the menu).

  • Once the deadline for neighbors to submit their questions has passed, give council a call and get the letter outlining required changes from them via email. Then forward this to Masterton. This will save you a week waiting for Masterton to receive the letter.
  • Once DA is approved, Masterton will require 3-4weeks to complete your documentation. This time is included in your 90 period.
  • With 45 days to go from your deadline, start chasing up.
  • Ideally, increase the 90 days deadline to 120. (we needed 110 approx)
  • Keep a record of emails etc that have introduced any delays as you can use these to have your 90 days extended

Masterton will take care of submitting your documents to council. They will want to do this quickly and its in your best interest to do this as quick as possible. Should council reject your DA application that results in you exceeding your 90days then you will get hit with a large price increase. We were looking at around $4500. If possible get your house to be a complying development application, these are approved quickly and will be less stress.

We aimed for a complying development application but 1 requirement ruled us out of this type of application. Our council requires the front of the house to be a minimum of 1m in front of the garage. Having spoken to Beechwood homes I was aware of this rule but speaking to my Masterton contact they said it was not the case and she would look into it. Later we were unable to get a complying development application for the very requirement I requested she look into. We are currently waiting to hear back from council regarding our DA application. Very stressful waiting, will it be rejected, will we need to make changes to the house, if we do have to change it can we finally get the height of the doors increased, will we go over our 90 day period and be asked to pay more….

Your contact at Masterton will call you or email you every fortnight to let you know how it is going. When council put your documents online for neighbour to view, go online and make a copy of these documents for yourself. We found a few errors in these documents, minor but does indicate a lack of care. Things such as referring to tiles on the roof when there is colourbond, stating the size of the house as different sizes.