Planning Report Template QLD: What Actually Goes In a DA Planning Report

If you have gone looking for an official Queensland planning report template and come up empty, that is not you missing something. There is no single state-wide template. The state mandates the forms — DA Form 1 and DA Form 2 — and publishes a guide to filling them in. The planning report that goes with them is supporting material, and its shape is left to you and your council.

That sounds like a gap. It is really a clue about what the report is for. Council is not marking your formatting. It is looking for one thing: a clear, benchmark-by-benchmark demonstration that what you want to build complies with the parts of the planning scheme that apply to your land.

The short answer

Queensland has no state-wide planning report template. The state publishes the DA forms and a DA Forms guide; the planning report is supporting material demonstrating compliance with assessment benchmarks. Some councils publish their own template, example report or checklist. Standard sections cover the site, the proposal, the planning framework, and a benchmark-by-benchmark assessment.

What the state actually publishes

Two things are state-issued and mandatory in form: DA Form 1 — Development application details and DA Form 2 — Building work details. Which you need depends on what you are proposing, and DA Form 1 explained walks the nine parts.

Alongside them the department publishes the DA Forms guide, which explains how to complete both forms and sets out what the accompanying plans must show — scale, north point, dimensions, levels and so on. You can download the DA Forms guide and the current forms from the state planning website.

What the state does not publish, for ordinary council applications, is a planning report template. That is worth stating plainly, because a fair amount of material online implies otherwise.

There is one narrow exception. Applications inside a State Development Area are assessed by the Coordinator-General under a separate framework, and there an adequate planning report is treated as a mandatory component with a set outline. That does not apply to a house extension in a suburban street.

Which councils publish their own

Several Queensland councils fill the gap themselves, and where yours does, that document beats any generic template you find elsewhere.

Figure 1: Where councils supply their own report structure.

Brisbane City Council publishes a planning report template for its RiskSMART code-assessable stream. Bundaberg Regional Council publishes an example DA planning report. Noosa Shire Council's fact sheet on preparing a well-made application states outright that a planning report must be submitted with all development applications, and sets out what it must address. Western Downs Regional Council publishes assessment templates built around the codes in its scheme. Toowoomba Regional Council specifies how the report should be named and filed as part of a properly made application.

The pattern is consistent even where the documents differ: councils expect a written assessment, and they expect it to follow their scheme's codes rather than a generic outline.

Is a planning report legally required?

Carefully: not by name.

The Planning Act 2016 requires a development application to be made in the approved form and accompanied by the documents the form requires and the fee. Nothing in the Act says "a planning report must be lodged with every DA". What the framework requires is supporting information sufficient to let the assessment manager assess the proposal against the assessment benchmarks.

In practice a planning report is how that gets done, which is why councils ask for one and why applications without one attract information requests. Treat it as functionally required and legally unnamed. If you want the precise list of what else goes in the package, what documents council needs for your DA covers it.

The standard sections

Templates differ; the underlying structure barely does. A workable planning report moves through the same sequence.

Figure 2: The sequence a planning report follows, and why each section exists.

Introduction. What is proposed, where, and what approval is sought.

Site description. The lot on plan, area, dimensions, slope, existing structures, vegetation, access, services, and what surrounds it. Any previous approvals on the land go here.

Statutory planning framework. The planning scheme that applies, the zone and any precinct, every overlay affecting the land, and the resulting category of assessment. This is the section that establishes what you have to comply with, and getting it wrong invalidates everything after it.

The proposal in detail. Use, layout, site cover, height, setbacks, gross floor area, car parking, landscaping, hours of operation, staging, and how services will be provided.

Assessment against the benchmarks. Each applicable code, taken in turn, with the acceptable outcomes and performance outcomes addressed individually.

Non-compliances and justification. Covered below.

Conclusion and appendices. A short statement of why the proposal is acceptable, then the plans and any technical reports.

• ✓Introduction and proposal overview
• ✓Site description and background
• ✓Planning framework, zone and overlays
• ✓Detailed development description
• ✓Code-by-code benchmark assessment
• ✓Justification for any non-compliance
• ✓Conclusion and appendices

The section that decides applications

Anyone can write the compliant parts. Listing the acceptable outcomes you meet is clerical work.

The section that determines outcomes is the one dealing with what your proposal does not meet. Queensland codes are written as performance outcomes with acceptable outcomes underneath them. The acceptable outcome is one way of achieving the performance outcome — not the only way. Where you cannot meet an acceptable outcome, you are entitled to demonstrate that the proposal still achieves the performance outcome above it.

That demonstration is the report. Vague assurances that the proposal is "in keeping with the area" do nothing. What works is specific: the setback is 4.5 metres rather than 6, the adjoining dwelling's habitable windows face away, the overshadowing at 9am mid-winter falls on the driveway, and the streetscape rhythm is maintained by the retained front garden.

If a code assessable proposal complies with all relevant benchmarks, the assessment manager must approve it. So the report has one job for compliances — prove them — and a much harder job for everything else.

Writing one yourself

It is entirely doable, and writing your own planning report in QLD sets out the method. The work is not the prose. It is identifying every code that applies to your land and reading each benchmark against your plans without skipping the inconvenient ones. Confirm the code list with your council before you start, because overlay codes are easy to miss.

What to do next

An instantDA planning report assembles that assessment for you — your zone, your overlays, the applicable codes and a benchmark-by-benchmark response written against your council's scheme — for $169. A town planner preparing the same document usually charges $800–$1,500, which what a planning report costs in QLD breaks down.

Start with a planning report, or go straight to creating your report.