Development.i and Lodging With Your Council Online in QLD

If someone told you to "lodge it on Development.i", they were half right — the name is real, but it is not a lodgement system. Development.i is where you look up applications, not where you submit them, and the distinction matters because assuming otherwise is how people miss a lodgement deadline.

Queensland has three different online things in this space, each doing a different job, each often confused for the others. Sorting them out takes about two minutes and saves a wasted afternoon.

In this guide, you will learn what Development.i actually does, why there is no single site for the whole state, what MyDAS2 is for, how councils really accept applications, and how to use Development.i for the things it is genuinely good at.

The short answer

Development.i is an online development information and tracking tool, deployed separately by individual Queensland councils, with each instance covering only that council's area. You use it to find, follow and make submissions on applications — not to lodge one. To lodge a development application you go directly to your council's own lodgement channel.

What Development.i is

Development.i lets you search past and current development applications in a council area, view the documents lodged with them, look up basic property information, and — where an application is open for submissions — make one.

It was developed by Sunshine Coast Council with Queensland Government funding, and other councils have since adopted it. That history explains the thing that confuses people most: it looks like a state system because several councils run the same product with the same branding, but it is not one.

Figure 1: Two systems, two jobs. Neither is the front door for a council DA.

Each council runs its own

This is the part worth internalising. Development.i is software deployed per council, and each deployment only covers that council's local government area. Brisbane's instance shows Brisbane applications. Sunshine Coast's shows Sunshine Coast applications. There is no combined view.

Figure 2: Councils running Development.i, and the address pattern they follow.

Councils running it include Brisbane City, Sunshine Coast, Gold Coast, Redland City, Toowoomba Regional and Western Downs Regional, and the list has grown over time. The addresses follow a consistent pattern — the Brisbane instance sits at developmenti.brisbane.qld.gov.au — but the safest route is always the Development.i link on your own council's planning pages, because a council can move or replace the tool.

Councils that do not run Development.i have their own equivalents. Several replaced older PD Online systems with it; others never used either. If your council is not on the list, look for "find a development application" or "track an application" on its site.

MyDAS2 is a different animal

MyDAS2 is the state's online development assessment system. It is used where the state is the assessment manager or a referral agency — most commonly where a proposal triggers a referral to the State Assessment and Referral Agency — and it supports preparing and tracking those applications.

Some councils encourage applicants to prepare an application in MyDAS2 and then send the completed package to the council, which is where the confusion starts. Preparing in MyDAS2 does not lodge with your council. The lodgement step is separate.

• ✓Development.i — search, track and comment on council applications
• ✓MyDAS2 — prepare and lodge where the state is assessment manager or referral agency
• ✓Your council's own portal, email or counter — lodging an ordinary council DA

So how do you actually lodge?

Directly with the assessment manager, which for most applications is your council, through whichever channels that council offers. The state's own guidance is that applications are most often made to the local government, and that each council publishes on its website the best way to lodge with it.

In practice councils offer some combination of an online lodgement portal, an email address for the planning team, lodgement over the counter at a customer service centre, and post. Practices vary: some councils accept online lodgement for new applications only and want subsequent correspondence by email; others prefer everything through one channel.

There is no state-wide lodgement portal for council DAs, and there is no central site where all Queensland applications are published. How to lodge a DA in QLD walks through the full sequence, and DA Form 1 explained covers the form itself.

What Development.i is genuinely good for

Having established what it is not, it is a better tool than most people use it as.

Checking precedent before you apply. Search your street and your zone for applications like yours. You can see what was approved, what was refused, what conditions were imposed, and what the officer's assessment said. That is the closest thing to a preview of how your council reads its own scheme.

Seeing what is coming near you. Applications on neighbouring land appear before the notification sign does, in many cases.

Making a submission. Where an impact assessable application is open for submissions, Development.i is often the route. A properly made submission gives you submitter status, which carries appeal rights — public notification in QLD sets out what that means and the timeframes involved.

Following your own application. Once lodged, your application appears with its status and documents, which is a faster answer than emailing the planning team.

Two practical cautions

The information published is a record of applications, not planning advice. What was approved next door does not establish what will be approved on your land: the zone may differ, the overlays almost certainly do, and Queensland's schemes are not uniform between councils. Use it as evidence of how a council reasons, not as a guarantee.

And the documents shown are those lodged with the application, which means they can be superseded by later versions or by conditions in the decision notice. Read the decision notice, not just the plans, before drawing conclusions. If you are relying on what you find, confirm it with your council.

One more limitation is worth naming. What appears on a council's tracking tool is the record of applications that were lodged. It tells you nothing about work that never went through an application at all — the unapproved deck, the enclosed carport, the converted garage. A clean search result is not evidence that a property has no unapproved structures on it, and buyers in particular sometimes read it that way. For that question you need council's building records and a property search, not the application tracker. The two tools answer genuinely different questions, and a search that comes back empty should prompt more enquiry rather than less.

What to do next

Whichever channel your council uses, the assessment it runs is the same: your proposal against your council's assessment benchmarks. An instantDA planning report gives you that assessment — zone, overlays, applicable codes and a benchmark-by-benchmark response — for $169. A town planner preparing the same document typically charges $800–$1,500.

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