It's not often you hear praise for Lismore City Council. The majority of its residents will tell you what council is doing wrong, think fixing potholes, or how they cannot manage a budget, think over a decade of being in debt.

This is a good news Lismore City Council story. One that begins with a local shed builder who puts them well ahead of Ballina, Byron, and Richmond Valley Shire Councils when it comes to development application (DA) approvals.

Our local shed builder, who doesn't want to be named for fear of retribution, told the Lismore App that building approvals haven't changed a great deal.

"Even though I keep seeing Sharon Cadwallader on the news every night announcing fantastic things for Ballina, they still remain the worst council to try and get building approvals through."

"This is for a residential block or a shed, nothing special. It should be just stamped. We used to do building applications, but it became such a monster that we don't do it anymore. We actually say to the customer, here's the plan: you go to council and ask them how to do it and act as dumb as possible. They do it for them, and it's amazing how fast it goes through. That's the game we play at the moment."

"A lot of the shed companies I'm hearing are telling their customers that they don't do building approvals anymore because of the New South Wales planning portal being so terrible. Plus, you've got new staff all the time.

"I'm dealing with one at Mullumbimby at the moment. He's obviously a new guy who doesn't understand the processes. I'm talking about a house this time because we do frames and trusses as well, separate from the shed business. He's asking for all sorts of stupid stuff before the house is built. You don't get glazing certificates and you don't get truss certificates until they're built and installed. They're asking for them before they actually do the approval, and that just doesn't happen.

One example given was a Ballina Shire resident who wanted to put a shed on their vacant block at Wollongbar before building their house so they could move their belongings out of expensive storage.

"They denied the poor people because they said they were going to set up a humpy on the block, which was just ridiculous. They just wanted to save themselves some money. In the end, we built two 20 square metre sheds for him and bypassed council.

You do not have to get local council approval to build two 20-square-metre sheds. This goes through the State Planning Portal.

Our shed builder says that Ballina, Byron, and Richmond Valley Council's are the worst and Lismore is the best.

Lismore City Council hired Graham Snow as the new Head of Statutory Planning in June 2023. A new 'Fast Track' process was introduced, and twelve months on, council DA approvals have moved from 90-plus days to 31.5 days. The NSW Government sets a target for local councils to approve DA's in 40 days or less.

The key element has been hiring an experienced planner whose role is to do DAs only, something this person is passionate about.

As DAs come in, senior planning staff triages them, like in an emergency department at a hospital. Ninety to ninety percent are then peer-reviewed and issued, with a few complicated DAs needing further information, so they take a little longer.

With Lismore moving into a growth phase over the next five years for residential housing and looking to attract investors to build apartment blocks and more commercial businesses, it would appear as if Lismore City Council is leading the way in the Northern Rivers.

That can only benefit the residents of Lismore.

We don't say it often, but well done Lismore City Council.